


Delta Function

by sciosophia



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Older Man/Younger Woman, Pining, Post-Canon, Reunions, Separations, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Some Plot, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel, Tissue Warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-02-15 23:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 35,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18679693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciosophia/pseuds/sciosophia
Summary: “My life starts here.” She finds a point in the air. “Loops, and ends up—” She curls the invisible line around to meet its middle. “Here. Every day I wake up and I know I’m travelling along the loop, waiting to catch up with somewhere I’ve already been.”She drops her hand. It lands between them, and her knuckles graze his arm. “So, y’know. The future is relative. And a real bitch, sometimes."A thousand days afterDiscovery's leap, Tilly returns to theEnterprise. For Pike, it's been three years. For her, it's been fifteen.





	1. Alpha

**Author's Note:**

> Post-S2, canon-compliant. _**Spoilers**_ for the entirety of S2.
> 
> I could not get this story out of my head, so here we are. 
> 
> A note on ages: Memory Alpha give Pike's birth date as somewhere around 2202-2205, whilst the Pike-centric novel _Burning Dreams_ gives a much-later birth year of 2219. Further, Wikipedia seems to imply that he was born in 2214. This makes him either 52-55, 43, or 38 when the events of _Discovery_ S2 take place. I've adopted some backstory from _Burning Dreams_ , but I'll leave it up to you, dear reader, as to which age you prefer for the purposes of this fic.

_The main property of the **delta function** is in the fact that it reaches infinity at a single point and is zero at any other point. Its most important property is that its integral is always **one**._

_Although true delta functions are not found in nature, they are approximated by **short duration, high amplitude phenomena** such as ahammer impact on a structure, or a lightning strike._

—

“Sir?”

Number One's tone is inflected like a question, but she's not asking. The stars outside are telling the story for her.

“I see it.” 

It’s a pinpoint that isn't a pinpoint, a ripple that is more than just a ripple. The black dot would be invisible if it weren't bending space and time around itself; but it's larger and denser and heavier than anything else in the universe, and so it warps the constellations of the Alpha Quadrant like a funhouse mirror.

The Romulans have noticed it too; the pace of their fire slows, not quite to a stop, and their ships hover like sharks turning in an Earth-bound ocean. The battle ebbs, caught in the wake of the black hole.

“Don’t waste ammunition,” Pike tells Lieutenant Mann, “but as long as they're still firing, we are still defending ourselves.”

He takes the few steps required to stand at Number One's shoulder. He can see—can feel, in the inches between them—how she's tensed up, fingers braced over her console. Someone who didn't know her might mistake it for fear.

“I’m detecting high-energy gamma rays and gravitational waves that suggest a quantum singularity, Captain. Tachyon radiation too, it’s scrambling the sensors and the weapons array. And the gravitational distortion is _huge_.” They both watch as the data on her console scrolls by at speed, too much too fast. “But it's not—”

 _Enterprise_ shakes with another shot off the shields, but it's far away, a glancing blow that speaks to the Romulans’ drifting attentions. Pike grips the edge of Number One's console, glances behind him; sees Spock looking across from his station, already on the same page as they are.

“The distortion is not inwards,” he completes. “Gravity appears to be pushing outwards _._ Like—” 

The rest of his sentence hangs in the air. _Like an opening door._

“Sir—” Number One’s voice is low, and Pike catches the tilt to her head which means she's looking at him from the corner of her eye.

The unspoken. _Discovery. Burnham._ Treason if it leaves their mouths, and yet. If the data doesn't lie (and it rarely does), that treason will be pulling itself back into their present in the next few seconds.

Pike’s skin prickles. Fear. Excitement. 

It has been almost three years. A thousand days. 

“Amin?” 

The lieutenant at the helm turns to him. He reminds himself that she was there too, at _Discovery_ ’s end; that she will know what this is, or guess, at the very least.

“I’ve already compensated for the distortion, Captain. The approach might be bumpy but I can keep us from becoming gravity’s lunch.”

“Good. Do it.”

He’s about to let a boyish grin split his face, fueled by adrenaline; but there’s a burst of—of _light_ , so bright that he imagines for a moment this is death, coming to call him home— _away from that future, please_ —but as quickly as it’s there it fades, leaves beeping consoles and blinking officers in its wake. The stretching view of the stars remains empty. 

Pike tenses his jaw and gathers his resolve. “Updates?”

“Sir—” and Amin is still squinting against the faded light, frowning down at her console. “The distortion appears to be—” 

“Rapidly reducing.” Number One glances to the viewscreen. _Closing._ “But I’m getting new readings for high tetryonic radiation—” 

“I have a life sign.” Spock pushes the readout from his workstation onto the main viewscreen with one practised wrist-flick. “In gravitational freefall at the point of the singularity. It is originating from the same location as the tetryonic radiation, suggesting a small vessel or exo-suit—” 

“Yes, I follow. Mann, I need you to work out how to lower our shields for transport with those Romulans still firing.” 

Pike stands at his chair, leans over the arm and thumbs through a call to the transporter room. “I want a lock on that life sign, now. And medical,” —switching out to call Boyce— “I need a team to receive them, we don’t know if this is going to be a casualty—”

“Captain—” Pitcairn’s voice crackles through the comms. “We have damage down here, I can lock on to the life sign but the computer won’t let me bring it back to the transporter pad whilst it’s—”

“Do you have an alternative?”

“I can engage site-to-site transport but the primary relays in the pattern buffer were hit—” 

Mann’s console beeps. “Sir, the Romulans have disengaged their weapons. I’m in a position to lower shields for the duration of a transport—”

“Can you do it?” he asks Pitcairn. “Site-to-site?” 

“I won’t know if I can hold the matter stream in the buffer and re-target the ABC until I redirect—” 

“Yes or no, Commander?”

“Yes, sir, yes, I can do it—”

“Then—”

“Alright, sir, but with the energy distortions the best I can get is the middle of the bridge—”

“Do what you have to, that’s an—” 

“Yes, Captain, locking onto the life sign now—” 

A split second which feels like an indeterminate number of years, and then that never-gets-old glow materialises in the middle of the _Enterprise_ ’s bridge, rebuilding something atom-by-atom—

A _thunk_ as the Red Angel—still feotally half-curled, limbs outstretched like a diver reaching for the surface—leaves zero-g and crashes to the floor. The bridge crew flinch at the sound, but don’t leave their stations. Something about her is _off_ , Pike realises immediately; it doesn’t look _right_ — 

The Red Angel rolls onto her knees, and Pike spots the crack in the visor, hears the in-drawn breaths of someone who, until a moment ago, was drowning. The ragged pace of her lungs makes the Alert lights flash from her helmet like morse code, obscuring her face.

She stabs at the visor release with the heel of her hand, and it draws back; lets her unmistakable hair fall down around her face. 

He can hear it now, in the tenor of her breathing; can see it, in the shape of her, in the way that she holds herself, so different to Burnham.

“Ensign,” Pike says, voice far away to his own ears.

He steps forward. Tilly tilts her head, pushes her hair from her face, and in that moment time stretches and pings back like elastic. If he’d passed her in the corridor Pike might not have noticed, because she looks almost, _almost_ the same—but there are soft lines in the corners of Tilly’s eyes, her mouth; an unfamiliar sharpness that speaks to the passage of time.

She breathes, and her gaze never leaves his.

* * *

“Fifteen,” Tilly says. She’s perched on the edge of the couch in his ready room, arms loosely balanced on her knees and head down, eyes closed, breathing heavily. “A nice round number.”

“Fifteen years does check out.” Boyce runs the scanner up and down Tilly’s arm and across the width of her collarbones. “Cellular degeneration certainly suggests somewhere between ten and twenty years since the last medical record on file.”

“Ageing sounds way less meaningful when you say it like that,” she murmurs. 

Boyce moves the scanner up over her throat, raises an eyebrow. “Clearly your exposure to space did no lasting damage to your esophagus.”

She sways on the edge of the couch, and Pike instinctively grabs her arm. Boyce steadies Tilly’s shoulder. Her eyes flutter and then open.

“Sorry. Time sickness.”

“ _Time_ sickness?”

She focuses on Pike, like she’s following his words back out of the rabbit hole. In the ambient light her eyes are a deep, searching blue. 

“It’s a cool way of saying I jumped through a wormhole and now my body’s mad about it.”

She reaches up to grab his arm, to circle his wrist with her fingers. Like an anchor in a storm.

He lets her hold on; tries for calm. “You know, I had an Ensign once who said everything sounds cooler if you put ‘ _time_ ’ in front of it.”

Tilly smiles, like he wanted her to. “I hope you listened to her.”

Her eyes close again. Her fingers tighten on his skin. 

“Just breathe,” he says, trying to keep his own steady. _Anchor in a storm._

The _swish_ of the doors, and a familiar presence at his back. Pike leans away but doesn’t let go.

“Ensign,” Spock says. “You look unwell.”

She laughs, short and sharp. “God, I missed you. We all missed you so much.”

 _We_. 

She opens her eyes. Her pupils are still a little wide. 

“It can wait,” Pike cuts in before she opens her mouth. “Until you’re feeling better.”

She shakes her head. “No. I want to tell you this now.”

It’s… _new_ , this forcefulness (at least for him; was she like this with the others?). In the corner of his eye Pike sees Spock with his PADD poised, ready to notate. 

Both of them, set for a debrief.

He grimaces.

“Alright. But keep it short. And Dr Boyce stays until you go to sickbay.”

Boyce knows, the same as half the crew. They’ve already committed treason just by looking at her. Talking is simply another stage in a lost cause. 

Tilly exhales through pursed lips, like she’s fighting nausea, but her gaze is steady. Her focus on him is fierce and intent. 

“Leland was dead when we left. Which is ironic, to go that far and find out Georgiou collapsed him into a magnetized puddle before the wormhole closed? Or maybe it was after, or at the same time, or never, time doesn’t really matter when you’re on the edge of something like that, but he was dead, and we were alone, and we—it’s so—”

She flattens her mouth, swallows. “It’s so _cold_. And you have no idea, until you’re there, of what it’s like at the end of the universe. You can do the math, but it’s—it’s like nothing you’d imagine, _ever_ , just millions and billions of kilometers of cold, dead rocks for company.”

Her fingers tense and flex around his wrist. In the pause, Spock’s stylus scratches lightly at the surface of his PADD. Pike’s knees are starting to ache where he’s knelt on the floor, but he’s not going to move, not going to make her let go.

“But we—we still had the crystal. Control was neutralised, and the data stopped resisting transfer to a memory core once it realised we weren’t trying to blow it up anymore, and Michael—Michael decided that she would send us home.”

 _Michael_. After three years of silence, her name stings.

“That is…” Spock pauses, and a whole childhood rushes in to fill the space. “In-keeping with her behaviour and personal traits.”

“Yes. She saved us.” 

“But the crystal,” Pike says. “It should have burned out.”

“Sometimes, and it pains me to say this, I cannot tell you know much but, sometimes, when you’re dealing with—” and she waves her fingers in the air, “— _all this_ , our normal understanding of math can be a little…off.”

“ _Off_.”

She starts to reply; but her eyes flutter again, matching another gentle sway to her shoulders. 

“Okay, we’re done,” Pike says, but she shakes her head.

“ _No_ , no, I’m fine, I want to—I want to explain.” 

She works through that controlled breathing again—he can see Boyce surreptitiously running the scanner in their peripheral vision—and then refocuses.

“The crystal was broken, don’t get me wrong, the lattices had decayed and it cracked into, like, six pieces, but—it didn’t burn all the way out, not like we’d expected, because math, _off_. So we knew there was a chance we could still get home.”

“Yet,” Spock points out. “I see you here. When you left—” and Pike can hear the _home_ hidden inside it, “—you were not the Red Angel.”

“I told Michael it should be her, but she had—unfinished business, and she wanted to stay. I told her to come with us, I tried, but it was never going to—”

“Her mother.”

Tilly swallows. “Yes. Yeah. We left them with a piece of the crystal and we— we hoped.” She looks down at her hand where it’s still looped around Pike’s wrist. “Still hope.”

Silence. 

“Where are the others?” Pike asks gently.

 _Keep listening_ , he tells himself. _Even if you don’t want to hear_.

“We—we could find a way to jump, we knew that, as long as we had the crystal, but it was in pieces. Five, once we gave one to Michael and Dr Burnham, so it would be like—like a—”

“Like a stone skipping across a lake.” 

“Yes, exactly. Five smaller jumps, to get us from here to there. And I knew the suit, I’d had so many years by then to watch Dr Burnham’s logs, and I’d already helped Stamets run the spore drive, it made sense for me to wear—” She twists the fingers of her free hand. “We made adjustments, fixed the graviton beam, worked out our path. And we had three successful jumps. But then the fourth—on the fourth jump, something went— _wrong_ , I don’t know how, but the wormhole closed before they could follow me through, and I—”

She breathes out, very slowly. “I tried so hard to jump forward, out of a future I didn’t recognise into one that I did, but the suit, it never—it just never let me. _Backwards_ , only ever backwards. So I decided—I decided to find help.”

She looks up, fixes Pike with those bright blue eyes he hasn’t forgotten. “I decided to come back to you.”

* * *

_Time sickness_ , it turns out, is fatigue and nausea and musculoskeletal pain. Pike goes with her to sickbay—insists—until Boyce shoos him out with a stern look that says _you're not helping._ Tilly grabs Pike’s hand, nods her thanks (or reassurance, maybe), and he feels the future decade of work she's worn into her skin.

A specialist. That’s what he’ll agree with the Admirals, he thinks. Starfleet Transfer Regulation SFR-03-8532-3892. Besides; there’s precedent for misplaced officers on board. _Discovery_ ’s own past is replete with them: in Tyler under his own tenure; in Lorca’s justification for chasing down a prison shuttle in the middle of a war. 

He sits alone in his quarters, in civilian clothes, drumming fingertips against the arm of his chair. His heart is racing the way he hadn’t let it earlier, each beat a name: _Burnham; Saru; Nhan; Stamets; Detmer; Owosekun; Bryce; Rhys—_

The list goes on (and on).

Beta shift are chirpy with their afternoon, and some of them smile and nod at their Captain even though they know it’s 2am for him and everyone else on Alpha shift. He walks in circles around his ship, thinking. For six months, that’s all he’s been able to do—nothing said aloud, no shared memories over drinks or consoles—just the hope that _Discovery_ is okay. Now he only has reality.

The mess hall is quiet in its 2am-and-mid-afternoon lull. The light is a gradient, harsh to soft, to account for light-sensitive optical cells in different species. Tilly is at the far end, in the dimmest corner. The stars are thin, elongated lines in the large windows, throwing out softly modulating light. She looks like she’s sitting under the moon on Elyisum, a ghost of his childhood.

“Ensign.”

He has to say it twice before she looks up from her glass of water. 

“Oh. Hi. Hello.”

Pike gestures to the other chair. “This seat taken?”

She shakes her head. He sits. 

“I see you still can’t follow orders for bed rest.”

A quirk of a smile. She ducks her head. 

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“I guess that can be forgiven.”

She rubs the side of the glass with her thumb, leaves a fingerprint in the condensation. 

“It sounds different. Space, I mean. In different times. Like, a millennia from now, it just sounds… _empty_.”

Rationally Pike knows the ship’s ambient temperature is a perfectly comfortable 65 to 80˚F, but his skin prickles cold. Primal fear is an icy hand on the back of his neck.

“Obviously it’s psychological,” Tilly continues. “There’s no sound in space, but—I can still tell. When I’m somewhere with the living instead of the dead.” 

She frowns, little creases between her eyebrows that don’t quite go away when she looks up.

“Sorry.” She smiles wearily. “I’m being macabre. You’d think I’d have learned to hold better conversations by now.”

“It’s alright, Ensign.”

Her smile softens, a little more real. “Commander.”

“Commander?”

“Saru, he—he kept up our training, our development. I think he wanted his crew to have something normal in the middle of all—that.”

Pike knows that wish; to keep morale high in the middle of unimaginable fear.

“I don’t even know if it means anything,” she says. “Starfleet couldn’t sign off my promotions, or my Bridge Officers Test, but—it’s how I lived for all those years, so. It feels real to me.”

He recalls his own career in one vivid burst of milestones.

“That’s all it is. Experience. We climb the same ladder, just in…different ways.”

She sips her water. “I appreciate the advice, sir.”

In the lull he hears the engines whine, the soft chatter of crew in the corridor outside. He’ll have to work out how to brief them; those who don’t know, those who do. 

“I’ll speak to the quartermaster,” he says. “To make sure you get the right uniform.”

“You're giving me a uniform?”

He shrugs. “You're Starfleet. One of us, until I'm told otherwise. So. Blue jacket, two stripes on the cuffs. And no arguments.”

She contemplates her glass. Through it Pike can see the distorted dark red of the off-duty clothes they've given her. It makes the water look like arterial blood.

“Thank you.” Another silence. “The uniform feels like home.”

Starfleet makes nomads of them all, but it’s the ship they always come back to. They both know what they won’t say; that Tilly’s home is _Discovery_ , lost in time and secrets. Pike has the sudden urge to touch every nearby surface, as though he can keep _Enterprise_ safe just by knowing that she’s there. 

“Welcome back,” he says instead. “I missed you.”

He means _Discovery_ generally; but he catches the flicker of Tilly’s eyes to his hands and arms and chest, then up to hold his gaze. 

He’s not used to such direct looks from her—can’t process the way his pulse jumbles with it—and he leans back in the chair and crosses his arms, glances away. 

“I have to speak to Admiral Archer, but—I’ll fight for you to stay here, if that’s what you want.”

She bites her lip; nods.

“Well then. Looks like you’re stuck with us.” _With me._

She smiles, wide and bathed in starlight, and Pike remembers how much he likes making her do that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Starfleet Transfer Regulation SFR-03-8532-3892](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_General_Orders_and_Regulations#Starfleet_Transfer_Regulations) governs the emergency assignment of scientific and research specialists.


	2. Beta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the lovely comments on the previous chapter! I'm so glad everyone is enjoying this story and premise. 
> 
> Please note, there's a CW in this chapter for two (very) brief allusions to the loss of a parent.

“It's not much.”

“Are you kidding?” Tilly turns another full circle. “It's perfect.”

Pike looks at the space, overcrammed with equipment, and tries not argue. It's ten square feet of supplementary storage, a glorified cupboard squashed between the Astrophysics and Chaos Theory labs on H-Deck; but Tilly is grinning like a sunrise cresting a new horizon.

“Well. Good. I'm glad.”

He realises, as he says it, that he really _is_ ; enough that there's a small, strange glow in his chest, warming through him.

He clears his throat. “Did we cover the ground rules?”

“Several times.” Tilly runs her hands over the surfaces, smiling with pleasure; doesn’t look up until three seconds of silence have stretched out and she seems to realise he hasn’t replied. “Oh, you’re serious.”

“Command are—” _jittery_ “—keen to make your life on the _Enterprise_ as confluent with our mission as possible. They’re willing to let you stay here and work on your—project—as long as you can make meaningful contributions to the five-year mission—” and hadn’t that been a long conversation with the Admiral, “—and you don’t discuss subjects which are…off limits.”

 _Discovery_. Always the unspoken link on the chain between them.

Tilly taps the surface of the workbench. Solemnity crowds out her joy, and he feels wistful for it.

“I remember.”

“I’m sorry to ask again, Commander.” He’s still fighting not to say _Ensign_. “I just need to be sure that you understand.”

“No, it's okay. It’ll be your career in the garbage if I mess up.”

Pike shakes his head. “It’s not that.”

He doesn’t say that he is trying to adjust too; that he is secretly hoping Starfleet's ‘ground rules’ will be a framework in which he can navigate this mind-bending development. Tilly is at the top of a long list of the strangest things that have happened to him.

“Meaningful contributions to the five-year mission. No mentions of past or future life. I am Specialist Tilly and I am researching non-specific frontiers in synthetic nanoparticles.”

She nods at the end, like a full stop, and there’s that warmth again, deep under his ribs.

Pike focuses on the work to try and ignore it. “You have everything you need?”

“Uh-huh.” Tilly pats the micro-emulsifier next to her. He’s requisitioned it from the Pharmacology lab, much to Commander Tufir’s implied displeasure. “You understand how this works?”

“Better than I understood your four-dimensional math.”

“Because I think it’s pretty cool, okay—so, I’ll dissolve the surfactants in the solvents and get micelles, and then after the water’s added the polar head groups get all worked up—”

She flurries her hands around in demonstration.

“—and they bunch into microcavities that I can grow the silica nanoparticles inside of, see? If I add—where is it—”

She turns, checks the cabinets squeezed into the wall space behind her.

“—oh, here, great—if I add silicon alkoxides. And then once- _or-if_ I get the right synthetic crystalline structure, I should have something to restructure the lattices with. Like I said, that’s cool, right?”

Her grin is back, refreshing her expression. Tilly is so _alive_ , filling the silence where her absence used to be. _This trip almost killed you_ , Boyce had said when she was still in sickbay, once the suit was examined. Broken visor, failing life support systems, stress on the exoskeleton which had matched bruising and hairline fractures in her body.

The crystal, too; fused into the composite alloy, unable to be removed or replaced. It had been a secret relief, to know he wouldn’t have to send someone—her?—to Boreth, to a glimpse of their own fate in exchange for a new one.

The idea—to substitute the decayed natural structures with synthetic ones—had been hers. _Think of it as the crystal’s second chance at life_ , she’d said, sat on the biobed, fiddling with equations on her PADD, ignoring the wireless electrodes peeking from the collar of her sickbay gown.

Now Pike takes in her smile, her wide eyes, her animation. Of all the ways she’s changed (of the things she’s lost), her passion is not one of them.

“Very cool.”

“You’re humoring me,” she teases.

He doesn’t want to say that the coolest thing is watching her mind at work; instead he pushes away from the worktop and replies, “Maybe.”

He makes it to the door in what feels like half a stride in such a small space, but before he can leave—

“Captain?”

He turns.

“I mean it,” Tilly says. “I’m grateful for the space. It means a lot to me, being able to stay—stay close to people I know. There are—the thing is, so many of the people I care about are lost, but the rest of them, the rest of _you_ , are here on the _Enterprise_. So it feels like one part of my family is helping to find the other.”

 _My family_. Pike wonders what Tilly was doing when he said that, the last time his voice rang through _Discovery._ He'd meant her, too; the brilliant, flyaway Ensign who could barely look him in the eye.

Something clicks into place; her voice. It's still Tilly—still the slight shift upwards at the end of a sentence, still the pauses instead of full stops—but she sounds different; more resonant when her words hit his chest, devoid of the soft pitch of the youth she had practically yesterday.

“ _Enterprise_ can be your home,” he tells her, trying to file that realisation away. _A second chance at life_ , just like she’d said. “For as long as you need it.”

* * *

Pike wonders if time passes the same way for Tilly; if she experiences the days and weeks and months like he does (an endless march towards a certain fate), or if criss-crossing time turns you upside down, like Alice falling through the rabbit hole.

But she appears to adjust to the _Enterprise_ : works well with colleagues; picks up her increasingly assigned duties; makes friends. His default expectation is for Tilly to fall in with the cadets, the ensigns, the CTP; the ones with that same nervous energy she had, three-and-fifteen years ago. But he sees Tilly in the Officers’ mess, eating and laughing and joking with senior staff—people he graduated from the Academy with, who are the same age as him—and it strikes him as odd, until the obvious clicks. This new, smile-lined Tilly is almost his age, too.

* * *

“Sir. Sir!”

Pike keeps walking, as though it’s a strategy with any hope of success; finds such hopes dashed when Tilly catches up with them at the turbolift.

“I need to be in this landing party,” she says, half inside, one hand slammed down over the control panel to stop them going anywhere.

It’s a small, Class A planet which, he’s been reliably informed, is rich in amphiphilic organic compounds. He’d known Tilly would want to go as soon as he saw the preliminary scans.

“Commander, please remove—”

“That surface could be covered in the perfect nonionic surfactant for my nanoparticles, sir, if I were just able to organise the taking of samples myself—”

“Commander,” he says again, throwing his rank behind it.

Tilly snaps her mouth shut.

Pike turns to the landing party. “Wait for me with the shuttle. This won’t take long.”

He lets frustration seep into the words, and regrets it even as he’s stepping out of the lift; but he believes in his own strategy, and this is not the moment for self-doubt.

“Are you going to reprimand me, Captain?”

“Not for expressing an opinion. Though I prefer the questioning of my decisions to be conducted a little more formally.”

She blinks, then nods.

“I know you feel strongly about this,” he adds, trying to be kinder. “And I want you to succeed. But I have to make sure this ship’s primary mission objective is served too, and I have a limit to my resources. Today I believe their best use is with my biologists and geologists.”

Tilly presses her lips together, so clearly wanting to say more. He thinks of the Ensign who would have spilled her thoughts like ink—misses her, for a brief second—but now she only squares her shoulders and says, “In that case, if any further opportunities arise I’d be grateful if you gave it consideration.”

Pike’s two warring guilts surface again— _Discovery_ and _Enterprise_ , always duelling for attention—and a third feeling he doesn’t want to identify. He pushes them all down.

“Of course.”

“Thank you. And could I ask—?”

“Lieutenant V'Ruvar will organize samples for you, yes.”

He smiles, his failsafe way of disarming people. The hardness in Tilly’s eyes softens to a look he’s more familiar with.

Pike steps back into the turbolift. There’s a tension in Tilly’s shoulders, like she wants to move but isn’t, and he can see when she lifts her hand, just a fraction; and then, like she’s changed her mind, lets it falls again.

“Captain?”

“Yes?”

“Just—” As the doors close she steps closer, visible in the diminishing gap, and says, “Just—stay safe.”

* * *

Pike has never liked to drown his sorrows—clean living balanced with enough debauchery has served him well—but tonight; tonight he is drinking a measure of real whisky, from a real bottle, and it’s the one thing about today he doesn’t regret.

“Honestly, he’ll be fine,” Nurse Chapel’s voice says, lilting through the comms in his ready room.

“Alright.” It doesn’t make Pike feel better about it. “Tell Lieutenant V'Ruvar to get some rest.”

“Already have, sir.”

When the call is over, silence fills the space; except it’s not silent, because he can still hear his lieutenant’s voice, hoarse with shock, drifting on the wind. Pike drinks more of the whisky than he should in one sip; tries not to tighten his fingers on the glass when his door chimes. But—

“Oh,” he says, when Tilly steps into the ready room.

“Not who you were expecting?”

“Honestly, it’s usually Number One who comes to yell at me.”

“I’m not here to yell at you,” she says. “Unless you don’t give me some of that whisky, then I might.”

He holds the glass up to the light. “Single malt.”

“In which case I will _absolutely_ yell at you if you don't share.”

He obliges. She sits in the chair opposite, glass cradled in the curved palms of her hands. They’re still orbiting the planet, and the stars behind her move like the slowly turning hands of an antique clock.

“I heard what happened.”

Pike swallows a burning mouthful and grimaces. He’s talked about it enough, first in debrief and then in his Captain’s log.

“I did not enjoy filing that report.”

“I’ll bet.” She’s watching him, eyes as soft as her tone. It’s an inversion of twelve hours ago; calm from angry, upper from lower hand, right from wrong. “I saw the Lieutenant in sickbay, he seemed okay.”

Pike had seen him too; had stayed, for as long as he could, whilst Boyce stabilized him and stopped the bleeding and Chapel pulled a venomous talon from V'Ruvar’s back that was the same size as his forearm.

“He is. Or will be, Dr Boyce assured me.”

“And you? Are you okay?”

Trust Tilly to seek him out twice in one day; first to confront and then to comfort.

“Part of command is placing your crew at risk. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

“I didn’t ask if you were used to it, I asked if you were _okay_.”

He finds his breath escaping him in a long, controlled exhalation, like he’s giving himself time to think, to physically climb down from the adrenaline that still hasn’t gone away.

“I’m—” He swirls his drink around in his glass. “I don’t believe I managed the risk well enough today. I chose to split up the landing party. I asked V'Ruvar to work alone.”

 _In an unknown environment on an unmapped, unstable planet_ is unspoken.

Tilly leans back in the chair, sips her drink. It wets her lips, and they glisten in the low light.

“So, then…you keep going and you manage it better tomorrow.”

Pike raises his eyebrows.

“No, that sounds flippant,” she says. “I just meant that no one ever stops learning how to look after their crew and secure the mission.” She smiles. “Not even captains.”

“When did you get so wise?” he asks, not quite a joke.

“I had a lot of time to catch up.” She sips the whisky again. “When you weren’t looking.”

He’s catalogued the differences—her directness, her confidence, her ability to give commands and command the respect of subordinates—but for the first time, he really _sees_ it. Everything about her is sharper; there’s a defiant edge to her softness, like iron that has rusted over, and he realises with a start that Tilly has grown up.

She’s right; he wasn’t looking.

An old feeling rises; the same impulse that made him flirt with an Ensign in front of his bridge crew _(kidding)_ , even when he knew it wasn’t appropriate.

“You know, don’t you?”

His heart skips a beat.

“Know?”

“How much they all admire you. Love you, really.”

Irrational relief floods him. This is a question he can answer, even if he doesn’t want to agree because it feels arrogant, presumptive.

“I think—hope—that I earn their respect, yes.”

He’s not expecting her to laugh into her glass.

“You’re so fucking modest, you know that? And that just makes them love you all the more. And you can trust me on that, because I speak from experience. We loved you too.”

_We._

“Thank you."

Tilly leans forward.

“I mean it. Lieutenant V'Ruvar knows what it means to be on the frontier. They _all_ know that exploration doesn’t come with a safety mechanism, and anyone who thinks otherwise will have to get off at the next starbase because, frankly, they’re on the wrong ship. You did the best you could for him in the circumstances you found yourself in, and that’s all we’d ever ask of you.”

She sits back, a little flushed. Pike’s feelings _burn_ , and pass a point of no return.

“That’s a generous assessment,” he murmurs.

“It’s only the truth. No one would ever accuse you of not properly caring for your crew.”

Pike’s guilt spikes again; for more than V’Ruvar.

“Commander, when we were down there—” He stops, considers his words, begins again. “When we were down there I realised—I made the wrong choice in keeping you away. Even before I had to split up the party, I knew my intentions hadn’t been—honest. It wasn’t about the resources. But you, you're—you’re my last link to _Discovery_ and I have this overwhelming urge to keep you _safe_ —”

He’s rushing now, trying to get the words out before self-preservation takes over.

“—and I let that dictate my actions. It was arrogant and offensive and I denied you your agency.”

Silence. Tilly’s eyes widen, processing. Shame crowds in to join his guilt.

“Yes. You did do that.”

“I’m sorry.”

A second, as she stares into the space just beyond his shoulder, and he can practically see her reassessing their morning confrontation. _I have to make sure this ship’s primary mission objective is served._ Somehow it’s both completely true and utter bullshit at the same time. _You’re here again and now I can’t stand the idea that one day you might not be_ would be more accurate.

“I guess—I’m always glad,” she says at last, “when a mission ends and you come back safe. So—I get it, even if I hate it.”

It’s all he can ask for.

“Just—don’t do it again,” she adds. “You don’t have to protect me.”

An image, sudden and vivid, of his mother stood in their kitchen on Elysium, broken plates and glasses at her feet, the shockwaves of another terraforming-triggered earthquake fading out. Pike’s been programmed to protect since his stepfather whisked them across the galaxy to death and fire.

“Noted and actioned, ma’am.”

Tilly gestures to the whisky and his empty glass.

“You want a refill to seal the deal?”

“No. I don’t want to use it all up on deceptions and melancholy.”

“Saving it for a better occasion?”

“Maybe. When I find the right one.”

“Well, in that case—” and she downs what’s left in her own glass, stands. “I’ll leave it for another day too.”

Pike stands with her—after all, his mother taught him her good Southern manners before she died—and sets his glass on the table with hers.

“Commander,” he says, when she’s at the door.

“Yes?”

“I’ve carefully considered your request and if any such further opportunities for your research arise, be assured you’ll be the first person assigned to the landing party.”

She grins, and Pike thinks how pale the imitation in his head was, how arrogant he must have been to believe he remembered what she looked like. Her joy shines with its own light.

“I appreciate that.” She steps through the door; seems to hesitate. It's about to close, an echo of the day's beginning. _Stay safe_. “Goodnight, Sir.”

The door swoops shut, a marvel of mechanical efficiency, and Pike is left with his own blurred reflection in the tritanium.

“Goodnight,” he murmurs, to no one but himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, writing this chapter: _mumble mumble science and feelings mumble mumble_.


	3. Gamma

Number One is at his back—phasers drawn, her voice in his ear through the EV helmet—when she says, “I like her.”

Pike continues forward, down the twisted, darkened starboard corridor of a downed ship. His attention is split; half to Number One, the other to a state of cautious alert. The B’saari are nowhere in sight; unsurprising, given their hull is shredded. _Enterprise_ can’t penetrate the alloy; no scans, no systems, no life signs; no comms back to their own ship, either, only between communicators. They’re on a strict timetable, and it’s at the forefront of his mind.

Perhaps that’s why his thoughts jump to the rest of their landing party; two male (human), one female (Denobulan), one agender (J’naii). “Who? Lieutenant Commander Scrix?”

“Her too.” Number One edges into his field of vision. “But I meant Commander Tilly.”

Pike’s heart rate picks up. He puts it down to the yawning darkness beyond the reach of their shoulder-mounted lights. “You didn’t like her before?”

“Of course I did. She was nice. I just didn’t spend any time with her.”

His communicator cuts across them, and he flips it open. “Yes?”

“The escape pods look like they were jettisoned some time ago,” Lieutenant Commander Scrix says from somewhere on the port side of the ship. “Probably before it lost life support.”

Not a rescue, then. Or corpse recovery. Just abandoned metal.

“Alright, well—we have thirty minutes before we need to rendezvous, so take twenty to finish up your survey and then I think we’re done here.”

The ship is small; it takes half of that time for Pike and Number One to reach the stern.

“Clear,” Number One says; their stances loosen and their phasers lower.

“Not a B’saari in sight.” He hopes the escape pods ended up somewhere safer than here.

“You like her too,” Number One says, as though there’s been no break in the conversation. She leans on the far wall, crosses her arms. “I’ve seen you talking. She makes you laugh.”

He’d know her good-cop interrogation face anywhere.

“Number One.”

“Captain.”

“I know what you’re doing.”

She keeps watching him. The more she stares, the more there’s a weight on Pike’s chest that has nothing to do with the EV suit.

He sighs.

“Is this an on- or off-the-record conversation?”

“You mean, am I asking you as an XO or a friend?” Her voice softens. “As a friend, Chris.”

The weight shifts; not away, but towards a different feeling. Trepidation. Self-consciousness. Relief.

Logically Pike knows no one on _Enterprise_ can hear them, but he double-checks the EV suit’s communications are still blinking at him with that sad red light: _offline_. Satisfied, he mirrors Una, leans against the opposite wall. Thinks of how to begin.

“When I look at her, I see two people. One is a kid who talked too fast, had hardly any confidence in herself, was a _junior member of my crew_ not so long ago, and the other is…a seasoned senior officer, calm, capable, fifteen years of experience that’s arguably beyond my own in some ways, and suddenly she’s _my_ age—”

“And your _type_ , judging by what you just said—”

“Una, she’s my _subordinate_ —”

“No, she isn’t. She’s a specialist. Her direct report is Starfleet. She’s on your ship but that doesn’t mean she’s in your chain of command.”

He frowns down at the floor.

“And you’re saying…?”

“I’m saying that it’s complicated, but not for that reason.”

Una’s voice is as calm, as even, as ever. Pike’s heart races ahead of itself, and he tries to follow her tone, to let it soothe his concerns the way it usually does. Approach this like a problem to solve. He always comes to Una with those.

“I worry.”

“That you’ll take advantage?”

“Yes. Just because things are different, it doesn’t—doesn’t erase the way they used to be. How do I know the balance of power has really changed?” He looks up. “What if it hasn’t?”

Una nods slowly.

“I can understand that fear. The old status-quo feels a lot closer for you than it does for her. But really, I think you’re already doing the best you can, just by being aware of it.”

“I don’t want to be aware of it, I want to get rid of it.”

“That’s too bad,” she says, tone couched in tough love. “You can’t. But knowing it’s there is half the battle against misusing it. Just—let her make the decisions. Let her come to you. Remember she’s a grown woman and let her make her choices.”

_You don’t have to protect me._

He upticks his tone with forced joviality. “You know, this could be a pointless conversation if she doesn’t—”

Doesn’t what? He can’t put a name to her feelings if he doesn’t understand his own.

Una fixes him with that measured look; the one which x-rays right through him.

“Chris. I haven’t seen you smile at someone like that in a really long time. And she smiles right back.”

He wishes he wasn’t in the EV suit; he’s itching for the distraction of running a hand through his hair.

“You like her,” Una adds. “ _Especially_ when she talks too much.”

“This feels like high school,” he mutters.

“Does _any_ of this ever stop feeling like high school?”

She smiles, that teasing grin he used to feel on his skin, in the time before they grew up and moved on. Pike thinks of his Academy friends and their messy relationships, of colleagues on the _Antares_ and the _Aryabhatta_ and the _Chatelet_ who arrived as a singular _I_ and left as a plural _we_.

Una interrupts the train of thought. Perhaps she can see it, spiralling out across his face. “You know, you’re very similar.”

“Who?” he asks, stupidly.

“Because you’re both led by the same thing. Here.” She taps at the shell of her suit, high up on the left side of her chest. “You’re a wonderful captain because underneath all the training and regulation and protocol, everything you do is out of _love_ , Chris. And I think she’s the same.”

 _Service, sacrifice, compassion, and love._ His own words roll back to him. For a split-second he thinks about telling Una what he saw—that regardless of a growing feeling he can’t shift, he won’t bind someone else to that future—but he clamps down on the impulse.

His burden to bear; no one else’s.

“I appreciate your words,” he says instead. It feels small, feeble. How to explain the knot in his lungs, a wave of _gratefulness_ preparing to overwhelm him? Una, who is always there with just the right thing to say.

The beep of his communicator again, and Scrix’s voice, tinny through the speaker, says, “We’re all done here, sir.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. We’ll meet you at the transport site.”

He snaps the communicator shut, straightens from the wall as Number One does the same. Back on duty.

“Chris?”

He turns, already two steps down the corridor. Maybe not quite, then. Una hasn’t yet moved.

“Just—whatever you do or don’t do? Be careful.”

All the reasons this is a bad idea settle on his chest; a weight that’s been with him for longer than he’s realised. _One day she’ll go back for them. One day I’ll be worse than a ghost._

“I’ll be careful,” he promises.

Una is still for another moment; and then she catches up with him, heads aft, towards the transport site. She throws her words over her shoulder. “On we go.”

“On we go,” Pike murmurs, and follows.

* * *

The more he considers his feelings, the more they burn him, make him restless; but Pike’s responsibilities are bigger than—well, whatever this is. He has a ship to run, a crew to protect. Putting himself last is part of the deal. He keeps his smile and his discipline.

He tries not to be weak when he tells her he’s just stopping by the lab, even though he’s so clearly in the way; when she’s on the bridge in that sky-blue uniform with two stripes on the cuffs; when she speaks and he notices her dimples, flashing whenever her mouth curves around a sound that looks like a smile.

He reminds himself of the rules—Starfleet’s, his own—and ignores the fact he's always preferred following them to the spirit, rather than the letter.

* * *

Everyone has questions. Whether they can be answered is a question in itself.

 _We’re classifying it under Code 47_ , Command had told him; only for officers holding the rank of captain or higher. They can’t hide Tilly, but they can piecemeal her until it’s hard to keep track of who knows what. She is split into levels of knowledge that flow like fresh water into salt; deeper and denser the further you dive.

Tilly, though, is held to Starfleet’s statute as much as the rest of them. Regulation 157, Section 3 (Paragraph 18) shadows every move she makes, every word that leaves her mouth. He catches her sometimes, when she stutters like broken clockwork, faltering with information she can't share. _Starfleet officers shall take all necessary precautions to minimize any participation in historical events._ Not so easy when the history you're drowning in is the places and the people and the life you were born to.

“It was—” she begins, weeks into her new-old existence.

She’s just stopped the treadmill, still a little out of breath. Her hair is pulled back from her face, and the ends drip with sweat, stick to her neck. Pike, in fresh regulation gym wear, leans on the arm of the treadmill next to her, yet to start.

It's late. He'd expected to be the only one here; had counted on it, to clear his head. Mostly of her. But there she’d been, face set in determination over the last hundred yards of her run. Now she bites her lip, worrying at its plumpness with a sharp tooth, and he looks away; concentrates on the particular curl which has escaped and sweat-slicked itself across her forehead. It keeps the rest of her—glowing and rosy with exertion—out of his direct eyeline.

“It?”

“Where I ended up, where I've been, it was—"

Pike knows, in an abstract sense, the route she took across the years; the regs haven’t denied him that. What Tilly cannot give is detail beyond the dates, beyond where she’s trying to get back to. Pike has less official channels, too; knows through an old friend that Command are bristling against their own directives, lawyers combing a century of legislation to work out how this can be used to their advantage. How Tilly can be used to their advantage.

 _You don't have to protect me._ More and more he wonders if that’s a promise he can keep.

“It was _tiring_." She leans back, facing him. Her skin shines in the bright overhead lights. "Do you remember PTP 1?"

Post-Traumatic Psych class. An Academy pre-req on dealing with trauma. It's a whiplashing subject change, but he nods, follows her down the path. "I do."

"I had to write an essay on displacement, when ships get destroyed or abandoned and what happens to the crew?" She shifts her posture and voice, rounded-over syllables that make it clear she’s quoting herself. " _In such circumstances, officers are likely to experience feelings of powerlessness, otherness, and emotional detachment_."

“And that’s how you feel?”

“It has been? It’s not so bad here because it’s familiar, even if this—” and Tilly gestures around them, “—is like…seeing a photograph of myself that I’m too young to actually remember. Does that makes sense?”

He nods. The world had felt like that after Talos.

She fiddles with the hem of her tank top. “You know that L.P. Hartley quote? _The past is a foreign country_ —"

" _They do things differently there_."

“Yeah.” She smiles at his cut-in; softens, sombers. “I felt that over and over, we all did. Every leap backwards was another displacement, another unknown, and it—it exhausts you. You expend all your energy processing the trauma, and then you have to find enough left over to get up and get through your day. Everyone was always so _tired_.”

She lets her head fall back, eyes closed, as though talking about it has brought on the symptoms. The strip lighting is harsh, stuck on full illumination, and it turns all her colours sharp.

“I’m making the future sound terrible.” She lets her gaze fall forward again. “Not that I should be making it sound like anything.”

Tilly’s mouth curls up, tugs at the chain between them. Pike can’t remember the last time she smiled like that without pulling the same expression from him.

Una is always right.

“Not unless you want to get us in trouble.”

The air hums with his words, a frisson that prickles the hair on his arms. Tilly considers him, almost thoughtful. He’s getting used to her, slowly, but it’s still a little jolting shock when she doesn’t shy away. No more looking out from under her eyelashes; no more glances cast down at the floor.

“I’d risk trouble to tell you not to be afraid.”

His gut twists like he’s been punched. “Afraid?”

“Of the future. Not that I know anything about—” and she points at him. Pike’s veins flood with relief; with disappointment. “That was Saru’s clear rule from the beginning, not to look up our loved ones, so I don’t—I can’t tell you anything.”

 _It’s nothing I won’t already know_ , he wants to say, even as the phrase _loved ones_ is echoing around his head and his heart. “Of course.”

“The future, it’s…” She scrunches her nose. “It’s going to be okay, _more_ than okay. I saw good things and I saw good people. So, you know. For that future? All the trauma was worth it.”

Worth going back _to_. Tilly is still having trouble with her silica—her last report to command was vibrantly clear on how much progress remains to be made—but her departure looms on the horizon. _One day she’ll go back for them._

One day he’ll be worse than a ghost.

The lines of their lives twist and merge in Pike’s head, then split and go their separate ways, and he realises with sinking elation that this will only ever be temporary. Tilly’s future will never align with his; will never risk being bound to what he saw. His future will only ever be her past.

It’s—emboldening; painful; freeing. The last obstacle, falling away. His perception shifts; throws into relief everything he’s been trying not to notice. The soft curve of her; the dip and hollow of her collarbones; the rosy pink colour of her mouth. Her skin is still luminous with sweat in the bright lights.

For the third time in his life, the way he sees Tilly changes and shifts.

“Anyway.” She works to pull her hair tie out; twists the curls up and around into a bun. It’s one practised movement that she must have been making all her life. “You came here to run, not listen to me break the rules.”

She jumps down from her treadmill.

Pike has to work to find his voice. “You weren’t breaking the rules, you were—bending them.”

Tilly walks backwards through the empty gym; grins, wide.

“I’m sure you’ll regret saying that,” she laughs; waves as she reaches the door and disappears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [B'Saari](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/B%27Saari)   
>  [Denobulan](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Denobulan)   
>  [J'naii](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/J%27naii)   
>  [Code 47](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Code_47)   
>  [Regulation 157, Section 3 (Paragraph 18)](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_General_Orders_and_Regulations#Starfleet_Regulations)   
>  [Post-Traumatic Psych (PTP 1)](https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Post-Traumatic_Psych)


	4. Delta

The moment Pike opens his eyes, the edge of his mind feels sharp, alert. His grandmother would have called it a sixth sense. Pike thinks of it in less folkloric terms; it’s a Captain’s gut instinct, and it makes him nervous.

He waits through the Alpha shift for something to trigger a red or yellow alert; but the day unfolds as it promised to, an endless journey through warp-distorted stars. They move from one dot on the map to another, and at the end of the day, when they’ve reached the M-class, pre-Warp planet they’re meant to orbit for three days, he can eat, work out, decide to read his stack of waiting correspondence without a single hint of trouble.

He chooses to work in his quarters. If he steps foot in his ready room this late Spock will somehow find out and then lecture him on _optimal work-life balance_ , so he pulls on a regulation red t-shirt and sweatpants, grabs a cup of (decaf) coffee from the replicator in his room, and settles down.

Until—

The console chimes. _Incoming call from Commander Sylvia Tilly_ , in that melodic voice meant to keep them calm, even when the message is _self-destruct activated_ or _hull integrity at seven percent_.

His adrenaline spikes, gut instinct finally engaged. He swallows it away and swipes the audio call through. Except—

“Oh, crap.” Her voice fills his room. “That was an accident.”

It is both disappointing and amusing. Pike rubs unconsciously at his chest, like there’s a wound which needs healing, and laughs, says, “Good evening, Commander.”

“Oh, good evening—yeah, that’s definitely a better start than mine. Sorry to disturb you, sir, especially in your—oh god, in your room, I’m sorry—I was trying to cee-cee you into my report for Starfleet, not call you. This interface has _call_ and _message_ the other way around than I’m used to on—uh.”

A pause.

“Well, I’m reviewing my inbox now, so. Perfect timing. Send it across.”

Now that she’s called him he wants to keep the conversation going. He ignores his self-preservation instinct and adds, “It’ll be a gripping read, I’m sure.”

She laughs. It sounds muffled, like all the surfaces it bounces from are close by, and he realises she’s still in her tiny lab, well past the end of the shift.

“You’re working late.”

“So are you.”

“Captain’s prerogative. You, though, Commander. You should go to bed.”

The word feels more intimate on his tongue than he was expecting, and his cheeks warm.

 _You are an adult_ , he reminds himself.

“Is that a polite way of saying I sound tired?”

“You sound like you’re working hard.”

She laughs.

“Nice work on the diplomatic answer, Sir. No wonder they made you a captain.”

Three years and her lifetime ago, when Tilly was that nervous junior officer, she would have blurted out the same thing and then tried to walk it back. Now, though: there’s a pause, filled by the memory of her laughter, and Pike can almost _see_ the way she’s smiling, down in her lab. The way she used to smile for their friends when she didn’t know he was looking.

He hears her shift around at the other end of the call. There’s a soft metallic clang, like she’s putting equipment away.

“Am I keeping you?”

He should have said _don’t let me keep you_ ; less room for her to say _no_ , even though that’s what he wants her to do.

“No, I don’t mind. Actually it’s quite nice to have someone here while I clean up. Well, _here_. You know what I mean. I just need to—”

There’s the chime of a console, and then: “There. Now I’m all done.”

A corresponding chime on his PADD, and Tilly’s message to Starfleet slides into the top of his _unread_ list.

“Oh, and don’t bother reading it now,” she adds. “It has basically all the same conclusions as the last one, so it would make very bad bedtime reading. Although I’ll maintain that all work-related material makes bad bedtime reading.”

“You sound like Spock.”

A guffaw—far too endearing—and the sound of drawers being shut, of a console being powered down to standby. “I massively doubt that.”

“Alright, not exactly like Spock, but—the same general message.”

“I always thought Spock was a terrible workaholic?”

“Maybe for a human. Not so much for a Vulcan, I don’t think. But he is very big on the idea that overworking yourself is _ultimately unproductive and therefore illogical_.”

“Well, he has a point.” She pauses. “They really look after you, don’t they? Spock and Number One?”

“Better than I deserve.”

“You must have missed them, when you were—with us.”

It’s the second time in as many minutes that _Discovery_ ’s treasonous name has been on the tip of her tongue. It feels like they’re approaching an edge, and Pike doesn’t know if he’ll stop them going over it.

“I did. But it got better. I was with the right people to help me forget.”

A longer pause than the others, and this one not broken by the gentle hum of Tilly’s activity. That smile he’s imagining sounds long gone.

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“I want to—I _need_ to talk to someone about them. And not a mission debrief, not an official report, just—me, wanting to talk about my friends, and talking about them with someone who’ll _get it._ ”

It was his own suggestion, to make the subject of _Discovery_ treasonous. Pike knows the official count of everyone on board who is keeping that same secret. When he speaks to them _Discovery_ sits in all of their mouths like a stone.

Spirit, rather than letter.

“Yes.” The word leaves him like an exhaled breath. “Yes, we can talk about them. I can relocate to my ready room if you pref—”

“No, don’t—not on my account. It’s fine, there, where you are is—is fine.”

That edge rushes up to meet him. Pike works to keep the adrenaline out of his voice as he says, “Here, then.”

“Okay. Give me maybe ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes. Got it.”

He hears her fumbling, drop something, and a long-lost tremor in her voice as she says, “Got it.”

In the silence after the call, Pike removes the half-drunk coffee, clears his desk, checks that the hospital corners on his bed are regulation-neat. He stands in his quarters with a toothbrush in his mouth and wonders what the fuck he’s doing, even as the entire sequence gives him vivid Academy flashbacks; tidying his side of a shared room in the expectation that, the next time he was there, he’d bring company with him.

He counters it by pulling his uniform back on, minus the bright jacket; less intimate, less inappropriate, even as he’s running a hand through his hair and glancing in the mirror to see how it looks.

“Hi,” Tilly says when the door chimes and slides open.

For a moment she doesn’t move. Pike smiles through feelings he’s refusing to acknowledge, gestures for her to come in.

“Sit.” He points to the couch by the window; adds, reminding himself he’s not giving orders, “Please.”

A low whistle from Tilly as she approaches the couch, twisting her head to look around as she goes.

“This is some pretty good real estate.”

Pike has never coveted physical space—he doesn’t think you can be, not when you choose a life of constant and sudden shifts from one home to another—and not for the first time he feels uncomfortable at having what somebody else does not; but Tilly walks straight past the couch and to the window, and he realises what she means.

He’d meant to turn up the lights; but they’re still dimmed to an ambient golden glow, and it makes the view that much sharper. The planet turns in the stretch of floor-to-ceiling glass, washed in reds and purples. Scans tells them it’s woodland canopy over 94.7% of the surface, but from here it looks like watercolours meeting and mixing on a canvas. Dusk is a line slicing the globe in half; light beyond, dark behind.

Pike joins her at the window. Tilly is reflected in the glass, and even with the view he finds that she pulls his focus.

“It’s still amazing to me,” she says, and he watches her reflection speak. “After all that destruction, to see places with colour and _life_ , it’s—it never stops being a gift, you know?”

“You always find the bright side,” he murmurs; then, at a normal volume: “I know it wasdifficult.”

The words feel too small for the feelings she’s conveyed—too insignificant to encompass _time_ and _sacrifice_ , _displacement_ and _trauma_ —but she has a grateful tilt to her mouth as her gaze slides over to him. She turns a little, rolling her forehead along the glass, and the stars in her irises shift.

“It’s better than it was, now that I’m here. Now that I’m home.”

 _Home_. How much of that word means _Enterprise_? How much of it means this feeling between them they’re failing to verbalise?

“Although,” she says, “it would be nice if I could speak to the ship’s counsellor without risking jail time.”

He laughs. “That’s my fault.”

“Well, now you’re paying for it, I’m sure listening as I say _I miss my friends_ on a loop wasn’t your plan for the evening.”

“No. But I don’t mind. I’ll be saying it too.”

Quiet; only the slow rotation of the planet below. The light which flows in is the same colour, washed out by distance and starlight, so that Tilly’s uniform and hair and eyes are hued lilac and pale pink.

“After we—after the jump forward,” she begins, “I used to ask Saru how he coped when he left Kaminar, and he was always so _honest_ about it. Because you don’t cope, not at first, and maybe not for a long time, and he—he told me to hold on to that. He said if I gave myself permission to struggle I’d manage it better. And he said that eventually I’d learn how to go without, and how to go on, how to make the grief and the loneliness smaller so I could _live_.”

Familiar respect stirs in him, pinched by sadness. “It’s good advice.”

“Of course, back then—” _in the future_ , “—it was because _we_ missed _you_ , and not the other way around.” She watches him with keen, lilac-shaded eyes. “Now I’m here with you, and I miss them.”

 _I missed you_. That’s what he’d said in the dim light of the mess hall, on that first day of the rest of her life. He’d meant all of _Discovery_ —still does; still feels that void where they used to be—but in this exact split-second of time, he is thinking only of her.

Pike braces himself to say something—doesn’t know what confession will fall from his mouth; only that is has a shape and a purpose—but before he forms the words, Tilly turns back to the stars and murmurs, “I have to bring them home.”

 _This will only ever be temporary._ Pike knows that, and it’s half the problem; an inconvenient technicality making a bad choice look good. Something settles in his chest, a fever scorching the edge of his instincts, and he lets his training take over; steps back, steps _away_. He’s spent his life chasing the best in other people, in himself. He cannot let selfishness win now.

“Watching _Discovery_ make that jump was hard.” He sits on the edge of the couch. “But it was easier, knowing I’d left my crew with Saru.”

Tilly’s shadow is a cut-out on the floor, moving to meet him. When he looks she’s turned, back against the window, forced into silhouette by the stars. The shadow and the silhouette meet in the middle; the ambient light of his quarters etches her features from the darkness with low, golden-hued light.

“He’s been there through so much of my career.” He can see in the edges of light that she’s biting her lip, thinking, before she adds, “He _built_ it with me.”

“I can tell, Commander.”

“You can?”

“Of course.” The memory flashes, vivid; sitting in his ready room, being told to manage the risk better. “Saru is a voice of reason that I’ve missed, but—having you here, being able to get your perspective? You make room for yourself in that same space.”

A pause. When Tilly speaks, her voice is small.

“Thank you.”

“I give praise where it’s due.”

“Well, Saru deserves it, he’s the patient teacher.”

“You’re easy to teach.”

She laughs. It’s sharp; a hard, disbelieving sound. It echoes down the years to a girl who didn’t believe in herself. Perhaps she’s not completely gone, after all.

“I mean it,” Pike says. “You’re clever, and passionate, and quick. It was a pleasure to help you learn.”

“Even when I used fifty words instead of one?”

His mouth twitches. “Even then.”

Tilly pushes off from the window and, finally, sits on the couch; reaches up for her collar, unzips it at her throat, presses the backs of her hands to her cheeks like they’re warm.

“I had all those years to learn about command—from you, and Michael, and Saru—but _Discovery_ never felt like my full responsibility until I lost it. And now saving all those lives, bringing them home, it’s in _my_ hands, and I—well, it gives me sympathy for what it’s like, to be a captain.”

Pike thinks of the Oath, of words spoken down through time by the men and women who have come before him. _To boldly go._ Tilly has traveled further than most.

“Here’s the thing about a captaincy.” He leans forward like it’s a secret, shortening the space between them. “No matter how many tests you take, how much you prepare, once you’re out there you can only make it a success if your crew has faith in you.”

Tilly leans forward too. Her hair spills over her shoulders, scattering the scent of Bajoran lilacs. She is holding his gaze, eyes wide and interested, and burning with something that he is so close to naming.

“And _Discovery—_ they _will_ have faith in you.” Without conscious decision, he breaks that gaze to glance down at her mouth. “I have faith in you.”

There is a pause; a moment in which he can decide to lean forward, or lean back. But the air has thickened, pressing close and hot like a lover. Tilly is looking at him as though to memorise every single atom—her eyes flick to his own, to his mouth, along the line of his shoulders in that black undershirt, back to his eyes again—and when she carefully, silently turns her hand palm up and places it in the space between them, she makes the decision for him.

“Does it get easier?”

She’s whispering now, navigating this new space where the rules end and transgression begins. The soft grind of the impulse engines fills the quiet, and Pike finds that he is reaching out to trace the lines of her palm, the soft flesh that curls involuntarily inwards at his touch.

“A little.” He lets his fingers travel, settle feather-light on the exposed skin of her wrist. He hears her intake of breath, short and sharp.“With time.”

It’s Tilly who closes her eyes, who takes the leap. For a moment it is only the soft, curious press of mouth to mouth; but then the tension in her seems to snap, and she sighs and falls into it, brings her other hand up to touch his face, to grip his hair with greedy fingers.

They lean in to one another; two equal and opposite forces, keeping each other steady. And he needs it, Pike realises, because his knees feel weak and his skin is burning like it hasn’t done in years: like he’s that Academy kid kissing his first girlfriend in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge; like he’s with Vina again, in some far away dream.

It’s a jarring thought. He feels guilty as soon as it sparks; for Vina or Tilly or himself, he doesn’t know. He pushes that life away—into the past, where he left it—and takes a breath, breaks the kiss; keep his fingers tangled in Tilly’s hair, soft and scented and still vibrant red, even in the low light.

“I didn’t—I hoped it might be okay,” she says, breathless. “But if it’s—”

“No, it’s not—not that.” He skims the curve of her cheek with his thumb. “It’s just—complicated.”

A soft sigh of air that is almost a laugh, and Tilly closes her eyes.

“Can we just—can we pretend that it’s not complicated? For a little while?” Her words touch his skin. “Please. Be selfish. Just this once.”

Selfishness has never been his natural state of being—there has always been a bigger purpose, even when it was just his father teaching him simultaneously about science and god—but his resolve has been pushed and pulled and punctured by so many things, and the scent of her is overwhelming him. She tightens her fingers, nails scratching lightly at his skull, and it catches his breath in his throat, pierces his chest like a hot needle. He wonders if she even knows she’s doing it.

The light outside shifts; the pinks and lilacs fade as _Enterprise_ orbits past that line of dusk, slipping into night. The sun winks and flares and disappears behind the planet’s curve.

She kisses him, light and promising.

“Be selfish with me.”

* * *

He expected her to be nervous—and maybe she is; maybe he just doesn’t know how to read that from her anymore—but she pulls his shirt off with sure hands, pushes him back to his bed with them. She lets him pin her to the mattress, wickedness curving inside her smile; but then he traces his teeth along her pulse, pulls her arms up over her head and fixes them there, wrists clasped in the span of his palm, and she closes her eyes in scrunched-up pleasure.

She makes the noises he’s dreamed about; sighs and moans and exhales as he makes a map of her. She’s so _warm_ ; they both are, burning with the unspoken, blazing at every point they touch. Her knees dig into him, hold him in place, a wordless demand to stay exactly where he is. She murmurs reassurance; invokes god; asks him, in the way she gives herself over, to become whomever he will turn out to be in this moment.

He fills the negative space around her, within her; forces her sudden inhale, the arch of her back and the curve of her throat as she throws her head back. He listens to the cadence of her sighs and wonders how he will ever catch his own breath again, because this woman—soft and fierce and ardent beneath him—has stolen it.

 _Temporary_ , he thinks, hiding himself and his cares in this transient place they’re carving out for themselves. _Only temporary._

* * *

“I forget,” she says into the gloam, “that the last time you saw me was five minutes ago instead of fifteen years, because you never changed, in my mind? So it felt normal to circle back around and find you just the way I’d left you. But, I guess—not so normal for you.”

Tilly props herself up on one elbow. She’s frowning, like she does when she’s reached a conclusion she wasn’t expecting. Her palm is splayed out over his heart; she must feel its not-quite-slowed pace, the still-rapid rise and fall of his chest.

Pike can see a few tiny strands of gray at her temple, threading through the red. Her hair is mussed, frizzy with sweat and sex, and it spikes primal satisfaction in his chest; _I did that._

He reaches up, tucks her hair behind her ear; or tries to. It bounces free, and Tilly’s frown lifts into a smile.

His own mouth tilts up as he says, softly, “Not so normal, no.”

He touches her hair again. It glows like bronze in the leftover light.

“When I was a Lieutenant,” he says, “I had to pilot a shuttle out past a neutron star, and the radiation was refracting through gas clouds. We threw an infrared filter over everything to see where we could avoid it and I remember space, it...lit up with these tendrils of red. And this—” He tugs gently at her hair. “This reminds me of that every time I see it.”

She bites her lip, blinks rapidly enough that he’s afraid he’s made her cry—that he moves to take it back even though he means it—but she shakes her head.

“No, it’s okay, I’m just—” She clears her throat; shifts so that she can press kisses along the concave contour of his collarbone. He feels it on his skin when she says, “You still have great hands, by the way.”

He laughs, full and rounded by surprise, and it must shake through her. He feels her look up at him more than he sees it.

“It was obvious, right?”

“Obvious?”

“That I had a crush on you back then? And that it was _the size of space?_ ”

“Oh.” _Back then_. Only so many days ago; but this feels like a dividing line, marking the moment he began thinking of it the way she does; another lifetime, far away. “I—”

He turns it over in his head. Tilly must get impatient, because she moves up to his pulse and prompts, mouth still against his skin, “You…?”

“They teach you how to deal with—” _Crush_ feels juvenile, patronising, even as Tilly seems happy to use it. “How to deal with that kind of attention from subordinates. You were an excellent junior officer who’d been promoted very young, and I figured that—”

“Babbling, you can say it—”

“—amount of talking was just how you dealt with it.”

Tilly hums, a thoughtful sound that travels through him, makes him want to shiver. The skin on his arms goosebumps, and he shifts; one hand up behind his head, the other to smooth across the line of her shoulders, bare and freckled and flushed under his palm. He can’t see her face—still hidden in the hollow of his throat; by the cascade of her hair—but she pushes into the touch, arching her back. He lets his hand follow the natural slope, brushing along her spine.

“I liked the talking,” he murmurs.

She moves her hair back; leans up, chin in hand, using him as her perch. Her arm is warm across his body; her elbow sits in the notch of his hip like a piece that was made to fit.

“I used to think about it,” she says, looking down at him. “The crush, I mean. And it wasn’t just that you were older and confident and handsome—oh, don’t look at me like you’ve never heard that before—it wasn’t just that, it was…I thought about how much I wanted to impress you, and to know you, _properly_ , from a position of mutual respect. I used to think about how happy I was that I'd made you laugh. But you always felt so far away.”

He follows the dip and curve of her with his hand; shoulder, waist, hip. “I’m not far away now.”

She tilts her head in her palm; considers him for a long moment before she folds up, curls around him; smooths her hands along the lines she finds.

“No,” she says against his skin. “Not so far away.”

* * *

Even before she leaves, Pike is aware of the cycle his martyr complex wants to set in motion; guilt, self-reproach, retreat, more guilt. He could hold her to those words— _just this once_ —and say that they won’t do this again; could insist on tomorrow as a blank slate, a reset, a rewind.

Tilly is redressed, hair pulled back with an elastic band she’d repurposed from his desk. Sex hadn’t made her nervous; but now, standing at his door, fiddling with the cuff of her uniform jacket, her nerves seem saved up for a different type of intimacy.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

She layers her words, inflects _tomorrow_ with a thousand meanings. In the small space between them he can feel the vulnerability she refused to show in his bed; can see a look he recognises from every time she solved a problem because she loved somebody.

“Tomorrow,” he says, and the opportunity for a reset, a rewind, fades and disappears.


	5. Epsilon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter adopts a character and some backstory from other Trek sources; namely, [Admiral Alexander Marcus](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Alexander_Marcus_\(alternate_reality\)), who was expanded in the AOS to be the person who convinced Pike to join Starfleet. If you want to get a feel for the guy, try [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Y4nXTANRQ) from Star Trek Into Darkness, where Marcus chairs a super important Starfleet meeting but still flexes by calling Pike "Chris" (please beware, this clip has **major spoilers** for the movie if you haven't seen it).

_Vengeance_ , Pike thinks, is a poor name for a Federation ship. Perhaps it made sense during the War, fulfilling its original purpose; a hulking beast built for combat and secrecy, twice the size and three times as fast as _Enterprise_ , with no registry number or nomenclature marked on that night-black hull. Now, though, peace reigns; it’s a capital ship, repurposed for command and fleet duties, and those nine letters have been painted large across the saucer. Displeasure had stirred in Pike’s heart at the sight of it.

“Chris.”

Admiral Marcus steps from the transporter pad with an outstretched hand. Pike takes it, shakes; puts on a smile which is easier than it feels.

“Sir. It’s good to have you with us.”

Marcus isn’t wearing that black badge, only his Admiral’s insignia; his position at the head of Section 31 is need-to-know. The headcount of those on board who do is _one_.

“I couldn’t miss an opportunity to catch up with an old friend.” Marcus squeezes Pike’s hand, hard, and lets go. His eyes slide over to his left. “And this must be Commander Tilly.”

Marcus smiles. His charm is as crisp as his anger, his authority, his command ever were.

“Yes, Sir, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She smiles, wide and genuine. Pike squares his shoulders and clears his throat, works to hide how it makes him bristle. It’s not jealousy, not quite; being stuck between his father and mother and stepfather was enough of that for a lifetime. No; it’s like finding a wolf at the door and being asked to invite it in.

 _This_ , he thinks, watching his old mentor engage Tilly in easy conversation, _is why there are fraternisation regs_. He’s being pin-pricked by the urge to intervene, to keep her safe from a perceived threat which is no more than the manifestation of his own prejudice against Section 31; no more than the scales which fell from his eyes when he learned Marcus was a part of them. Pike would laugh at himself if he was less disappointed.

Marcus likes to work quickly, to-the-point, Pike remembers that. They’re settled in his ready room before anyone has time to blink, and Marcus leans forward, hands clasped on the polished glass of Pike’s desk, to say, “Frankly, this can’t continue.”

Anxiety shocks Pike like electricity. He fights the urge to tighten his fist on the table top; to glance at Tilly; to give it away in his expression. Marcus cannot possibly know—

“We’ve got an unprecedented opportunity to shape the development of Starfleet and to protect the Federation from future threat. And from where I’m sitting that opportunity’s being wasted.”

Tilly shift in her chair. Pike’s own tension fades, flooded by relief until it turns to unease.

“Sir, I don’t follow your meaning,” he lies.

“I’ll be clearer. Commander Tilly is a critical asset. With what she knows, Starfleet could advance beyond all identified enemies of the Federation.” Marcus turns to her. “You have the power to stop another war, Commander.”

“Or start one.”

She meets the Admiral’s gaze, holds it. Pride blooms in Pike’s chest; he works to stop a sudden smile.

“This was discussed at length when Commander Tilly returned. Regulation 157 is clear that officers take—”

“All necessary precautions, historical events, etcetera—I’m aware, Chris.”

“Of course.”

“When it comes to temporality, the current regs are horseshit. Excuse the language,” he adds, with no hint of regret. “There’s no framework for this scenario. We’re all stumbling in the dark. Except for her.”

Tilly tilts her head. There’s a faint crease between her eyebrows.

“With respect,” Pike begins, the phrase thick like ash on his tongue, “Even if the regulations don’t fit, does Command want to jeopardise them? You rewrite one rule, it sets a precedent to do the same for others.”

“Rules evolve.”

“But you want them to evolve in the right way.”

Marcus tilts his head. “I see our notions of progress have diverged.”

“I’m not sure that’s what I’d call it, Sir, but—yes.”

He leans back in his chair, lips pursed. “There’s a view in Command that this falls under Article 14 of the Charter.”

 _Section 31_. Pike works to contain the bitter taste in his mouth. Of course they sent Marcus, out of all the Admirals.

“I can’t see how this constitutes extraordinary measures in times of dire emergency.”

“Chris, the real secret is that we’re always in times of emergency. The work we do under the Charter is why no one realises that.”

“Which I appreciate, but Commander Tilly—”

“Permission to speak, Captain?”

Tilly’s voice is edged, sharp with impatience. Shame strikes in him like a match. They’ve been discussing her like she’s not even here, and now she’s waiting for his assent, radiating discontent. Tilly has become so open in the other half of his—their?—life, in the other half of his bed, spilling her feelings and dreams and history and pleasures, that it feels strange for her to ask.

He nods. “Permission granted.”

She turns to Marcus, the same question resting in the air.

He spreads his hands wide. “Whatever you have to say.”

Tilly pauses. Then—

“Neither of you have any idea what you’re talking about.”

His brows raise. Pike feels himself do the same.

“I know that’s blunt,” she adds. “But—you don’t.”

 _Dissenting opinions are useful_ , Marcus had said when Pike was knee-deep in the CTP, looking for advice. _Use them._

Now he's considering Tilly with narrowed eyes, a thoughtful twist to his mouth. “I’m listening, Commander.”

“Only—” Her gaze shifts between them, settles on Marcus. “Helping you would be, well, it would be paradoxical, the past would change—”

“The future,” Pike prompts gently.

Something in her expression flickers—falters—but she only nods.

“Thank you, yes, the _future_ would change, and the threats you’re perceiving, they’d just—” She mimes an explosion, or a puff of smoke, “—they’d disappear, and new ones would rise in their place, ones that you _couldn’t_ anticipate, that would be _worse_ because their development would speed up to match yours. So, changing the future…in the end, all you'd do is multiply the threat.”

Tilly's hands fall slowly, settle palms-down on her thighs. She’s tense enough that Pike can see the fabric of her uniform dress bunching beneath her fingers, sky-blue against her skin. He resists the cut-off impulse to reach out and take them.

Marcus is still leaning back, regarding Tilly with narrowed, curious eyes.

"I'm not sure your view is shared by all of our temporal scientists."

"Sir, it's my view and I'm sticking with it, and if you want my complete honesty I have to say that I—in this instance, I feel bound by General Order 1."

Pike shifts in his chair. She's never broached this particular point with him; he’s punctured with faint surprise.

"General Order 1?" Marcus repeats.

"Yes. Non-interference in the development of civilizations applies just as well here, in my mind."

"The Prime Directive applies to _other_ cultures or civilizations, Commander."

"Well, have you considered that's what the 23rd century is to me, these days?"

She's fierce, firm, making her point as though it isn't symbolic of everything she's been through. _The past is a foreign country_ , Pike thinks.

"You should be aware," Marcus says, "that Command don't and _won't_ consider this a General Order 1 scenario. Even if they did, this would very clearly constitute an exception."

Tilly shrugs.

"I swore that same Oath as we all did, Admiral, to uphold the Prime Directive, even at the cost of my own life or the lives of others. I had a captain once who used to say—" She glances at Pike. "Who used to say that Starfleet is a promise, and I—well, the way I see it, that Oath is a promise I intend to keep."

Quiet in the wake of her words. Marcus purses his lips.

"We'll agree for the moment that it's open to debate."

Tilly's jaw works, but she doesn't reply.

At last Marcus relaxes his stance, his stare. "Regardless, your conviction's admirable. Starfleet likes that. I like that. It's why we came here with more than one proposition."

"Proposition?" Pike asks. He feels the tension in his shoulders pulling taught.

"Your research is pushing at the frontiers of science," Marcus says to Tilly. " _Enterprise_ might be the best ship in the fleet but she can't offer you the resources we have at HQ."

"HQ," she repeats, slowly. "You want me to go to San Francisco."

 _San Francisco_. The words hit deep and hard.

"Ideally? Yes."

"Sir." Pike lets his slowly-burning anger shape the word into something brusque and sharp. "I don't appreciate having my officers poached, especially not from under my nose and with no warning of Command's intention to do so."

There’s dread, too, twisting inside his heart and lungs. _She's not meant to leave yet._

"It's not an order, Chris. Just a recommendation."

"Which I and, I'm sure, _my_ officer would have enjoyed prior notification of."

Marcus nods; a slow, considering movement. "I can see that. The classification level was taken into account when deciding not to pre-brief you."

 _So engage the Code 47 channels_ , Pike wants to yell; but it's a losing battle, long past, and the first concern now is what the outcome of this tiny, unspoken war will be.

"Starfleet R&D has the best facilities in the Sol Sector, bar the Vulcan Science Academy. You'd have full access to the TTS lab. You'd be provided with your own workspace, your own equipment. Command are willing to transfer other staff onto your project if necessary."

It's—a good offer. _More_ than good. It's the kind of thing Starfleet's best Science officers work all their lives for.

When Pike looks at Tilly, she is not looking back. She's focused a little way off to his left, where the stars of Sector 009 fill the window. She looks—tired, he realises. That dread in his lungs twists tighter.

"You can take time to consider it," Marcus says.

For a long moment she doesn't reply. Her eyebrows knot and her mouth quirks, like she was about to speak but changed her mind; and then she turns her head, chin tucked to shoulder, gaze somewhere beyond the both of them. Pike's heart beats fearfully against his ribs.

"Thank you, Admiral, for the offer and for the time, but I'm... I'll be declining both."

A gruff hum, and Marcus rubs his hand along his forehead, fingers massaging at his skull.

"I won't lie and say I'm not disappointed, Commander."

She straightens her posture, keeps Marcus in her eyeline.

"I'm grateful for the faith and confidence of Starfleet, I really am, but I—the truth is, I’ve spent the last fifteen years being pushed by limitations, and I don’t think a shiny new lab and three assistants will yield better results than being on the _Enterprise_ ,with people who were there at Xahea, who—who understand what happened and what we went through and what we're trying to _achieve_. They're my crew, they're my—"

There is the briefest, most fleeting flicker of her gaze to Pike's, and then she bites her lip and doesn't continue.

"I forget," Marcus says at last, "how compelling that bond is."

He is carefully neutral; doesn't betray whether the recall is positive or negative.

Pike forces his shoulders to relax; affects an easy smile.

"I guess you lose sight of that, stuck in the Admiralty."

Marcus pushes his chair back.

"Yes, well. I'm sure you'll face the same struggle soon enough, Chris."

Pike wonders when the prospect of promotion began to feel like a threat. Marcus stands; Pike and Tilly follow automatically, and Marcus holds his hand out to Tilly in goodbye.

"Commander. It was a pleasure."

"Likewise, Sir."

He does not immediately let go when the handshake ends.

"The offer remains open."

She gives his hand one final, firm shake and extricates herself.

"That won't be necessary, Sir, but—thank you."

As she's dismissed, Tilly meets Pike's gaze for the briefest second, the smallest smile in the corner of her mouth, and it washes through him like an absolution. _She's not meant to leave yet_.

"Nice girl," Marcus says when they're alone.

"Excellent officer," Pike counters, choosing to keep the scowl that comes with it.

"Of course." Marcus slides his hands into his pockets, wonders to the window. "We wouldn't covet her so much if she wasn't."

 _Covet_. The word sinks like a stone in his stomach. Curiosity burns, fueled by underlying fear.

"Why the offer, then? Why not just invoke your discretion to transfer?"

Marcus seems to consider the view, chewing at the inside of his mouth. The _Vengeance_ is a speck in the window, its black hull barely distinguishable from the space around it.

"Sometimes it's not worth having an asset if it won't come willingly."

The burn shifts from curiosity to fury, biting at Pike's insides. _Covet. Asset. Girl_. A tool to be managed.

On the outside, he clears his throat and moves towards the door; the furthest he can go in telling a superior _we're done here_. So many years down the line from the day Marcus said, _kid, you're too good to waste your life on Earth, come and see the stars instead_. How things have changed since then.

Marcus takes the hint, knowingly or otherwise; moves from the window.

"No, no," he says, putting a hand up when Pike goes to exit with him. "You've got a ship to run, Chris, don't waste time walking me around it. I can find the transporter room on my own."

It's uneasy, the notion of Marcus having free reign on _his_ ship, even as Pike has no power to stop it. This whole meeting—this whole _day_ —has felt restless and unsettling, like a wind blowing in from the west, wicked and warning. He can only press his mouth into a thin line and nod.

"Of course, Sir."

Marcus pauses millimeters from the door’s motion sensor.

“Whatever’s keeping her here—whatever she's loyal to—I hope it's worth it."

He turns. The doors slide open—the hubbub of the bridge rushes in for a moment before they close again, obscuring the view of Marcus's retreating back—and then Pike is left alone with the echo.

* * *

There's an edge to his mood, even once they go to warp and leave the _Vengeance_ behind. _Whatever she's loyal to_ rattles around Pike's skull, an intrusive thought plaguing the rest of the day. He reminds himself to breathe and set it aside; ignores the way it agitates him, hot like lava in his lungs.

“You okay?”

Una touches his sleeve. The smooth whine of the turbolift lilts under her words, taking them away from the Alpha shift.

Pike deflects her with a smile. “I’m always okay.”

Una has a talent for keeping her face neutral, but by now he can read the minute shifts in her expression. He lets the on-duty line of his shoulders drop a little.

“Really, it’s fine. It’s just—a little stressful.”

“Visits from the Admiral? Always.”

The lift carries them through the belly of the ship until they go their separate ways. Pike decides to eat in his quarters, to work there too. He can’t deal with the noise of the mess hall or the bright lights of the gym; not when that phrase is still circling his brain, swimming around and around like a shark looking for prey. _Whatever she's loyal to._

When the door chimes, he knows who it is—who it always is.

“Come in,” he says, without looking up from his desk.

He hears Tilly pad lightly across the room, and then she leans on the back of his chair, slides her hand along his neck to tangle her fingers in his hair. Pike closes his eyes before he can stop himself.

“Hello,” she murmurs, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

He turns without speaking; stands; crowds her with his advantages in height and weight and strength. She pulls his hair when he kisses her, sighing into the press and push of each rough touch, and he’s sure that her fingers will leave bruises on his arms tomorrow.

* * *

“Why didn’t you take the offer?”

Tilly stops the abrupt circular motion of drying her hair with one of his towels; looks across from where she’s perched herself against the desk. She’s wearing his regulation sleepwear, and Pike wonders how long it’s been since someone shared his bed often enough to steal his clothes. The shirt is stained a darker red where the ends of her hair have soaked the material.

She folds the towel over the back of the chair; kneels on the edge of the bed, crawls across to settle inside the curve and hollow of his side. Her hair is damp and cold against his bare skin.

“I thought about it.” Her words brush softly over his chest. “And, you know, we’re talking serious consideration, even if it was just for a moment? But I—”

She trails her fingers across his collarbone, tracing the same lines over and over like she’s trying to read them. He reaches up; stills her hand by enclosing it with his.

“I would have approved the transfer, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

 _I would have hated it_ , he doesn’t say, _but I wouldn’t have stopped you._

“No, it wasn’t—I’d never think that of you—” and his heart glows, “—but I meant everything I said to Admiral Marcus. Have for a while, even if I haven’t—even if I didn’t say it out loud to anyone before.”

_They're my crew, they're my—_

“I’m—” _Fucking euphoric._ “Glad. That you wanted to stay.”

Tilly curls up tighter. Pike feels her fingers flex inside his palm. He’s starting to recognise the way she craves physical touch when she’s nervous, upset, concerned, and he obliges; lowers the lights to fifteen percent illumination and pulls her further into him, braced in the curl of his arm.

“It was frightening,” she murmurs at last. “When I couldn’t remember which way around the past and the future were? It happens more than I’d like it to and I—I’m afraid of it, afraid of what I might do or say to the wrong person in the wrong time. But then you were—you were there to remind me.”

Pike squeezes her hand. “Whenever you need me to be.”

Tilly hums. He can feel it vibrate through her chest and into his own rib cage. Their words feel dangerously close to an exchanged promise; to deeper and stronger words that Pike has been trying to push away.

 _Whatever she’s loyal to._ He feels the truth winding itself around them, bound together in his bed, and knows with clear-cut certainty that this will be impossible to untangle. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [USS Vengeance](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Vengeance)  
> [Article 14, Section 31](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_General_Orders_and_Regulations#Starfleet_Charter_Articles)  
> [General Order 1/the Prime Directive](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Starfleet_General_Orders_and_Regulations#General_Orders)  
> [TTS (Time Translation Symmetry)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal#Time_translation_symmetry) is involved in the real-life science of time crystals.  
> [Sector 9](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sector_9)


	6. Zeta

Sometimes, Pike misses the parties. He was a cadet once, after all, and then an Ensign and then a Lieutenant and Lieutenant Commander; but somewhere after Commander proper, and certainly after Captain, the socialising stopped being able to survive the boundaries.

"Have fun tonight."

Una speaks past him to where Ensign Huynh is heading for the turbolift. Their stations have already been handed over to Beta shift, and Commander Vázquez is speaking with her helmsman, waiting for Pike to do the same for her. He busies himself with signing out of the bridge system, leaning over the arm of his chair like it's the only task in the world. He'd wished Huynh _happy birthday_ at the start of Alpha shift, but everyone is pretending that Pike doesn't know about the party even though he approved their use of the observation gallery. It’s easier to maintain formalities this way; they don’t have to invite him, and he doesn’t have to say no.

"I will! Thank you."

Huynh's voice lilts with enthusiasm. Pike tries to recall her age. Twenty-four? Twenty-five? Still young enough to get excited about birthdays.

The end of a shift is not the same as the end of a captain's working day; the warp core's intermix chamber is threatening to malfunction, and Chief Louvier describes to Pike in animated terms that the plasma pressure is too high.

"We'll have to maintain at least warp seven until it's fixed," Louvier says, leaning on the rail. The vertical chamber runs down from the impulse deflection crystal above them, and the matter/antimatter flow pulses lightly, refracting blue and yellow light through the plexiglass casing.

"How long?"

"The work's delicate. Two days."

"The Acamarians are expecting us in twenty-six hours."

Louvier shrugs. "Unless they want to explain why _Enterprise_ is floating around their system in infinite pieces, they'll have to wait."

Pike sighs. Louvier laughs, claps him on the shoulder.

"Get some sleep, Sir. It'll look better in the morning."

It's good advice. Pike has felt tired for a long, long time.

He takes a meandering walk through the ship; down first, moving from Engineering on O Deck to the hangar bay on Q, the shuttle bays on R, the botanical lab on T. There's a garden attached, with a ceiling twice as high to accommodate the Kaferian apple trees and Xupta trees, and Pike stands in the doorway, watching the technicians move along from plant to plant, pruning and shearing. The air is warm and thick, scented with chlorophyll and fruit.

Pike takes the route up on the starboard side instead of port; works his way back via T and R and Q and O and the rest of the alphabet until he gets to H Deck. Months ago he’d have told himself he was stopping here to check on the Airlock Complex or the Communications Bay, but—these days, he’s less inclined to lie to himself.

The door to her lab is shut. Pike makes his presence known; no answer. It unsettles him, even after he’s double-checked that the room is empty. Tilly exists for him in specific places; her lab, his ready room, his quarters. His bed. To have no point at which to fix her feels dangerous, as though, without a tether, she might float away.

The party is one floor up, in the Recreation Deck Complex. Fuelled by curiosity, Pike skirts the lounges and the games room, nodding to bemused crew as he passes, making it clear from his speed and gait that he won’t be impinging on their own time. The lights are dimmer here, demarcating off-duty space, and he follows the noise to the end of the Observation Gallery.

Huynh’s birthday is a profusion of colour and light and sound. Pike sticks to the shadow, leaning against the wall to observe. The Lieutenant-Commander-and-below half of Alpha bridge crew is here, and he can see Mann dancing like she’s been bitten by a Teirenian ant, can see Alden drinking something brightly coloured and faintly smokey. They look like they’re having fun.

He rolls his shoulders and pushes away from the wall, turns to go; sees her.

Tilly is at the other end of the Gallery. She’s leaning on the wall too, shoulder and hip braced against the tritanium, talking to Yeoman Barrows. She's wearing a dress he's never seen before, and her hands move quickly, sloshing her drink around in her glass. Whatever Tilly says, it’s enough for Barrows to throw her head back in laughter, then curl over with her arms pressed to her stomach, and they support each other through the mirth, eyes squeezed tight, mouths wide. Pike wonders if Tilly knows how pretty she looks when she lets go; here and elsewhere.

It prickles over his skin, an odd sense of being bereft. He has her to himself so often—more than he should expect to, enough that the moments don’t feel as stolen as they should—but it’s like a mirror suddenly held up to the truth. She is only ever his in spaces made for two.

Pike swallows, slips from the Gallery before someone notices him and pays attention. The move from noise to quiet is like splashing his face with water; helps the fog of feelings clear a little, refines them with rationality. He pushes the uncomfortable mix of resentment and heartache down into his psyche, and tells himself that none of this is their fault.

* * *

The door chime jolts him from sleep. It’s loud and insistent, sounds more than once.

“Alright,” he says to nobody; rolls out of bed, automatically wide awake. “Alright.”

Tilly is leaning against the doorframe when it opens, one eye shut, the other squinting up at him.

They regard each other for a long moment, until she says, “I may have had something to drink.”

“Alright,” he repeats; grabs the front of her dress to pull her gently inside.

She sits on the edge of his bed and kicks off her shoes; falls backwards, arms spread wide like she’s going to make a snow angel from the regulation cotton covers. Her hair spills over everything, red against grey, and she closes her eyes; sighs, long and contented.

“Here.” He gets some water; sits next to her, glass in his hands. It’s balanced on his knee, and the water is cold even through his sleepwear. “Drink this. You’ll get dehydrated.”

Tilly's fingers settle on the bare skin of his back, trail in lazy circles over his spine.

“A glass of water by the bed at the end of the night, I know, I know. This is not my first party, Captain Pike.”

She _pops_ all the Ps; makes herself laugh. He tugs her upright, hands her the water; makes her drink it whilst he watches.

“You staying here?” he asks when she’s done.

She put the glass on the floor—fails to notice when he immediately picks it back up—and turns, crawls up the bed to lie face down again. When she speaks, the slur in her voice is muffled by the pillow.

“I’m having trouble working out if the floor is moving on its own or not, so, yes, please, don’t make me try walking again.”

A moment as he watches her breathing start to slow, her shoulders to relax into the edges of dreams. Now that he’s awake, Pike realises he’s thirsty too, and he grabs a glass for himself, refills hers; returns to set them on the nightstand. When he gets there, Tilly is fast asleep.

* * *

This time it’s the _clink_ of the glass which wakes him; the soft _thud_ as Tilly puts it back down. Pike’s eyes adjust to the dark. He can see her standing by the other side of the bed, and she removes her earrings, lays them on the nightstand next to the water; does the same with her necklace, her watch.

“Hey,” he murmurs.

She stills, dress clasped in her hands; pulls it up and over her head. Her hair springs free, a darker outline bouncing against the rest of the dark. She folds the dress over the end of the bed, kicks off her underwear, and she’s steady on her feet as she returns to the bed.

“Sobered up, huh?”

She slides beneath the covers, molds herself to his back. He feels her lips against his spine, as light as her fingers had been earlier.

“Mostly? Everything’s still a little off, but at least the floor doesn’t feel like it’s part of an actual boat anymore.”

Her arm slips around him; he can feel her tuck her face into the curve of his back.

“Did you have a good time?”

She hums; _yes_. "It was fucking awesome."

He laughs; can feel the press of her arm across his ribs with the movement. "Huynh's a good kid."

"She is."

He's caught by an echo of old surprise, by the notion that Tilly is in a position to call anyone else _kid_ ; but it's pale, vague. Who she used to be is fading, like a long night forgotten with the dawn.

"I saw you," she adds. "When you came by."

He stills. She tugs at his arm. For a moment Pike doesn't quite understand; but then she shifts, giving him space, and he follows the pull of her palm, turning until there are scant inches between them on the pillow.

"You know, you looked a little lonely there, on your own."

Her eyes are wide and earnest in the dark. There's make-up smudged under them, and he reaches up, tries brushing it away with his thumb. Her cheeks curve, a smile he can feel against his palm.

He drops his hand into the space between them, back-to-back with hers, their fingers curled into their palms like reflections of each other.

"Sometimes it's a captain's job to be lonely," he says.

She hums again, a different cadence this time. It sounds heavy with thoughts, but when she speaks again it's only to say, "I would have come to say hi, if I—"

 _If I could have_ exists in the dark, unspoken. Reality intrudes, as stark as daylight, reminding him that this quiet, shadowed domesticity is only temporary.

“I would have liked it. If you really were at the party, I mean.” Tilly brushes her knuckles against his. “Almost like being there together, you know?”

Pike does know. How burning had the need been, to walk across that space and stand beside her, to touch the curve of her back, to talk to their friends and colleagues as a _we_ instead of an _I_?

He cages her fingers, pulls her hand to his lips; keeps holding it, tracing the bones with his thumb.

“Starfleet’s clear. Off-duty socialising isn’t appropriate between a captain and their crew. And I understand it, people can’t relax and drink and have a good time with their CO looking over their shoulder. So.” He smiles at her through the dark. “No socialising.”

Tilly observes him for a few seconds; leans up on her elbow, tilts down to him.

“And this,” she says, lips curving, nearing his own. “What about this kind?”

“Huh.” Pike tangles his fingers in her hair. “I’ll check the regs and get back to you.”

Her lips are soft, still taste a little sharp with whatever she was drinking. Her skin runs warm (always does, he’s noticed; figured it’s all that energy she burns) and it’s a pleasure-stoking scorch against his own as she lets him kiss a trail across her cheek, down her throat—

A chime, chirpy and repeating, and a sudden film of blue light as Tilly’s watch lights up on the nightstand.

“Oh, fuck, sorry,” she says, pulling away, stretching her arm out across the bed for it. The movement arches her back, exposes all of her lines and curves to the light. Her skin is bare and blue-edged, and in the sudden draft of cold air he has the urge to touch her wherever he can, as though he can keep her safe just by knowing that she’s there.

Tilly holds up the watch and silences the alarm. The light dims slightly, but she doesn’t turn it off.

“It’s my birthday,” she says quietly, still looking at its screen.

“What?”

She sets the watch back, lies down again; facing away from him this time. He can't see her when she speaks.

“I set an alarm for midnight in my home state. It’s officially my birthday.”

The words fill the space between them. Such a small thing— _it's my birthday_ —but it makes the years he's missed feel loud and pressing and urgent. The contours of her back have the sudden impression of blank marble. A moment ago he’d felt like the one constant point in her universe; now he's afraid that she is spiraling off somewhere he can't follow.

But she sighs—turns back to him, curls up like an ammonite—and the inch between them disappears. He pulls her into the hollow of his body with a possessiveness he is not used to feeling, and is unsure if he likes.

"You should have said."

She shrugs. Her hair, as uncontrolled as it ever is in his bed, brushes against his skin, and when she speaks he can feel the air pushing out of her lungs to shape the words.

“I didn’t want to intrude on Huynh, you know? She’s so young and birthdays matter so much at that age, but I—honestly, I’m not even sure why I bothered marking the occasion to _myself_ because at this point I have no fucking idea how old I am, not really. That stuff tends to get—lost, inside the bigger picture.” She presses so close that it muffles her voice. “You don’t take a tour through the galactic timeline and come out with a very good sense of self.”

Age has been the author of so many chasms between them—rank, power, experience—that to have it removed so completely from the equation feels like internal gravity failing. Pike half-expects to be thrown to the ceiling; but everything stays where it is. They both stay in his bed, together, and the sky doesn’t fall.

There’s not even a number between them anymore.

Pike gently extricates himself; murmurs _it’s alright_ when she looks bewildered, sits up, asks where he’s going. He sets the lights to quarter-illumination and pads across to the far wall, plays with the settings on his replicator until he can get what he wants, and then comes back.

“You can’t do birthdays,” she says when he sets the plate down on the covers, over the dip in the material where she’s crossed her legs. “You’re the CO.”

“Special exception.”

Tilly considers him and the plate. The cake is small, and there’s one candle. The flame flickers, and for a moment he can see both versions of her, then and now, blurring in the play of shadow and light.

A deep inhale, and Tilly blows the candle out.

“Just so you know, I made a wish.” She pulls the cake in two halves, holds one out to him. “And it was for you to get the replicator settings right so this won’t taste like cardboard.”

He takes the offered half. It’s a little springy, not quite the right texture, but— “I think I did okay.”

She shrugs, mid-mouthful, and then laughs.

“Happy birthday,” he says gently.

She lifts her half of the cake in lazy salute. “Here’s to at least being old enough to know better.”

 _It doesn’t help_ , Pike wants to say, because his own _I-knew-better_ is here, laid literally bare in his bed, and no amount of age or experience prepared him for this; for the choices he makes when it comes to her.


	7. Eta

“Do you think about the future?”

Pike is not quite awake. He opens one eye; finds he is looking at the wall and his own shadow cast by the light from Tilly’s PADD.

He turns onto his back. She’s sitting up in his bed, knees to her chest, PADD balanced there; but she’s looking at some point past the both of them, even as her hand still absently scrolls through data.

A few seconds, and then she comes back to herself; glances at him, looks back to her work.

“Yes.” His voice rasps. He clears his throat, starts again. “Yes.”

Fire; pain; the horror of his own face. In the blue-tinged dark, on the edge of consciousness, it’s more of a nightmare than it’s been for a long time. He casts his arm out, imprecise with sleep; it bumps up against her leg, still bare, and he anchors himself with her warm, living, present skin.

He wants to ask complicated questions— _do you remember what it’s like to live in forward motion?_ —but he finds himself still drowsy, and it makes him monosyllabic. “Why?”

For a while she doesn’t answer, just keeps working. Pike closes his eyes again, but the blue light is still there, disturbing the dark. His thoughts circle around the future, running to it over and over like water finding the lowest point in a landscape, and sleep walks away from him.

He opens his eyes. “Do you? Think about it?”

His voice is clearer now. Tilly looks at her work for a long moment, and then down at him.

"My life—” She runs her tongue along her teeth, starts again. “My life feels like it's stamped on time in the shape of a delta function. You know, the—"

She draws a δ in the air.

He nods. "I know."

"Okay, because I remember very vividly that you failed astrophys—"

"Astrophysics. Not math." He strokes the backs of his fingers against her knee. “Go on. Your life is a delta function.”

“It starts here.” She finds a point in the air. “Loops, and ends up—” She curls the invisible line around to meet its middle. “Here. Every day I wake up and I know I’m travelling along the loop, waiting to catch up with somewhere I’ve already been.”

She drops her hand. It lands between them, and her knuckles graze his arm. “So, y’know. The future is relative. And a real bitch, sometimes."

“You sound like Stamets.”

It makes her laugh; a short, sweet second where she smiles, and his heart feels large in his chest. She turns off the PADD. The light vanishes; his hand slips from her knee when she leans away to set it aside. She turns back, lies down beside him. There’s an inch of space between them, but Pike can feel the warmth of her—all that energy, always burning—and it’s a different kind of closeness that weaves itself into the dark with them.

“Paul wanted to do it,” she says.

 _Paul_. Not _Commander Stamets._ The years of her life that Pike missed, where superiors became equals, feel suddenly stark. Years as yet unlived by him.

“But after—and Hugh and Dr. Pollard did the best for him, but—he was never one-hundred percent the same after his—”

He feels Tilly lift her hand in the darkness, hover it over her heart. He knows what she means; the debris crashing through _Discovery_ , driving itself into Stamets' chest. She detailed it in her debrief, a document he’s read more times than he wants to count. It is inescapably an incident that occurred under his own orders, and Pike still feels responsible. That's the other part of command they don't prepare you for.

“But _I_ knew the math, I knew the suit. No one had spent more time learning from Paul about—about time and relativity and Einstein-Rosen bridges and...all the crap that goes with it, you know? And I figured—they'd dealt with so much, Hugh didn't need to watch Paul put himself in danger _again_. But if I died or got—lost or broken, that would be different. I wasn't leaving someone behind.”

Her words don't register immediately. And then they do.

He leans up so that he can frown down at her. "Nobody? You think you left nobody behind?"

The darkness is not quite full; he can see her eyes, wide and surprised by his tone. "No. Nobody."

Frustration builds in him like lactic acid; escapes as a growl from deep in his chest.

"How can you grow up so much and still be so—"

Pike doesn't want to say _stupid_ , refuses to diminish her; but he runs a hand through his hair and sighs, says, "How can you believe that?"

"It's not the same."

"They _love_ you. Every one of them. Like family."

"It's not the same," she repeats gently. "I wasn't asking someone to put half of their heart on the line."

 _Not then you weren’t_ , Pike thinks, unbidden.

He sighs again. As a sentiment he understands it; is annoyed by how much, by how sure he is that he'd do the same in her position. But—

"You're not any more expendable just because you're—"

He can't bring himself to say _alone_ when they are here like this, skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart in the dark.

"Well, maybe not, but—I could stop my friends from losing each other, _again_ , and all things considered it seemed a pretty clear-cut choice to me. Besides." She reaches up, holds his face. It has become so easy to be touched by her like this. "I knew I had people to come home to."

The words thread themselves into his heart, his lungs; make them feel too large, too full. There’s a warmth running through him like lines of liquid gold in broken porcelain. He doesn’t want to name the feeling, because if he does it will be granted power, and he cannot trust himself to it.

 _I decided to come back to you_. That’s what she’d said, on day one-thousand-plus-one.

Pike goes to speak; thinks better of it. He takes the hand against his cheek and presses it to his lips. The world is, for a moment, blessedly quiet and dark; only the sound of the engines, of her breathing and his.

* * *

It feels like a normal day. Pike skips dinner, because he has a bad habit of being too busy to eat, and works in his ready room, reviewing transfer lists. Commander Aelani has asked for a move to Starbase 5 _“to join my wife, who has recently been re-assigned”_. Aelani is an excellent officer who, he suspects, keeps Engineering together, and his chest is knotted with disappointment. He resents the spectre of her wife, and a stab of sharp irritation blooms and spreads down to his limbs.

It’s joined by immediate shame, and he rubs his hand across his eyes and murmurs to himself, “Fuck you, Christopher. Do better.”

He asks the heads of division for check-ins at the start of Beta shift, catches up on Command’s latest strategy briefing, approves two requests for new, complicated equipment in the xenobio lab. It’s all the mundane work they don’t explain to you in flight school, when you’re nineteen and your CO is encouraging you and your head full of dreams. The CTP motto should be _the stars are great, but don’t forget the paperwork._

His PADD chimes; a message slides into the corner of the screen.

COMMANDER SYLVIA TILLY Can I meet with you?  19:24:36 RESPOND / DELETE 

He double-checks the channel: formal, like he’d suspected from the language. He replies in kind.

CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER PIKE Of course, Commander.  19:24:43 RESPOND / DELETE 

COMMANDER SYLVIA TILLY Are you available now?  19:24:47 RESPOND / DELETE 

He hesitates. Yes, he is, but—they don’t meet in the liminal space between work and sex; commit only to one or the other at any given time.

He checks the hour. Still not far past the end of Alpha shift. It makes him uneasy.

CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER PIKE Yes.  19:25:01 RESPOND / DELETE 

Pike waits for a reply; forces himself to concentrate on his work. The PADD stays silent long enough that he starts to wait for the door chime instead, and he’s not disappointed.

Tilly’s oddly silent when she comes in, even though the protocol demands that she greet him by rank and wait for him to address her.

They’re doing this in the liminal space, then.

He lets her pace. His work isn’t going anywhere, and he’s learned to let her parse the world in the way she needs to; with movement and energy and, eventually, words.

When she stops, he catches it in his eyeline. He looks up from the couch to find her standing in front of him.

A moment. Then:

“I had a breakthrough.”

Adrenaline skewers his heart; his gut turns upside down. He sets the work aside and says, gently, “I see.”

He waits for more—there’s always more—but she just keeps looking at him, as still as he’s ever seen her. It’s more unnerving than the pacing.

What he really wants to say is _you’re scaring me_ , but he prompts her with, “And?”

“It’s good. A good breakthrough.”

 _Good_ is relative. _Good_ , in this scenario, means she will disappear somewhere he can’t follow and he will never see her again.

“You don’t sound sure.”

“No, I am, I’m sure. It’s good.” She reaches out; a brief touch to his temple, the line of his jaw, before she lets her hand fall again. “This is good.”

He has to ask her to elaborate. It’s part of the job he signed on for—duty before (he wants to say _love_ , won’t let himself) anything else—but Tilly is paler than usual, completely drained of all her colour, and the fear distracts him. Pike is used to turning his fear in on itself, making it work for him, but as he stands and follows her across the room it makes his heart hammer, his mouth dry.

“Hey.” He catches her hand, tugs; forces her to turn. With the other he holds her face, makes her look at him. He’s aware of the bridge crew on the other side of the door, one layer of tritanium and a locked door away from this. “Are you okay?”

He feels her shake her head, or try to; he’s holding her face too tightly, and he loosens his grip.

Tilly’s voice is small. “Are you afraid?”

He could lie; could try to bait the truth out of her.

“Yes,” he says. “Yeah. I’m afraid.”

Her eyes flutter closed; the tautness wired into her body softens and the pulse under Pike’s fingers steadies, even if it’s still fast.

He encourages her into his space; manages the way she almost falls when she breathes out that tension, so he can hold her upright. Her arms snake up around his back; she grips the fabric of his uniform with the strength of rigor mortis. Her face is hidden in his chest, and he feels the inhalation that follows the exhalation; deep and far from relieved.

* * *

He doesn’t ask before she leaves; doesn’t ask later, when they return to their rules about _work space_ and _personal space_ and she turns up in his quarters without a word. He divests her of her clothes and takes her to his bed and he never asks: _what are we afraid of?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The CSS code used for the messages was adapted from [this tutorial](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474979).


	8. Theta

The survey has been going for two days, and is scheduled to last two weeks. The planet is small, mostly grasslands and water and fungi that feed small mammals and amphibians. Twin suns keep the days long and warm.

 _Sir, we’re in close proximity to an M-Class planet,_ Mann had said, turning to look at him over her shoulder. _Doesn’t look like it’s been surveyed before. Should we alter course?_

Work, always there to take precedent. It has drawn all their time from them; Tilly has been assigned to a field team for the last forty-eight hours, and Pike has been aboard _Enterprise_ for each and every one. Two points between then (her eyes, wide and a little sad as she’d said goodnight) and now (two days without her, unable to exchange a word); and inside that—

Tilly has reported back to Starfleet with her breakthrough. _In conclusion, the silica has been shown to successfully regenerate the lattice patterns in the crystalline structure, to the effect that the Red Angel project can expect to be reinitiated within the next—_

It will change things.

“This is not exactly the worst place I’ve been,” Number One says.

She joins him at the crest of the hill. The grass, so pale green that it’s almost white, rolls in a light breeze, and the waves carry down to the team working below. Their metal cargo cases and equipment glint in the sun, harsh angles and stark contrasts against the natural landscape.

Number One is wearing non-regulation sunglasses. He should tell her to take them off.

“I want the crew to get some R&R,” Pike says instead. “They’ve been up there without a break for too long.”

Out of habit, they both look up. _Enterprise_ is a small star moving steadily across the sky. Pike has to cover his eyes against the double-bright light, and in the corner of his vision he sees Number One smirk behind her sunglasses.

“Off the top of my head, there should be enough room in the shift patterns for everyone to get a half-day shore leave.”

“Good. Contact Ops and get it done.”

Number One taps at her PADD, cradled in the crook of her arm the way she always holds it. A memory takes him, vivid and colourful, of Una in her red cadet uniform standing the same way, doing the same thing. The reality and recall of her both look the same to him, even though he knows they must be different; touched by all the years between now and then.

“I don’t suppose I can include you in this list?”

She’s looking at the PADD, expression carefully neutral. He can see the screen reflected in her sunglasses.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on my ship.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“You, though,” he adds. “Make sure you’re on it.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not letting you stay up there alone. _Enterprise_ needs to be in one piece when I get back.”

It crooks the corner of his mouth, a smile he can’t hide. Underneath the snark, it’s so typically Una. Always by his side, like his own twin sun.

She uncrooks her arm and lets her hand fall to her side, PADD still clutched there. Pike can feel her watching him as he watches the officers down below.

“In that case,” she says, once the quiet has stretched far enough that he’s clearly not going to reply. “I need to find Ensign Al-Fasi and tell him to start redrafting rotas.”

Pike likes all his crew—doesn’t understand how to lead without finding something good in even the smallest part of somebody—but he likes Al-Fasi in particular. He’s bright and idealistic and shy and driven, and every report from the CTP glows.

“Start ‘em small?”

Number One nods. “Start them small. That way they know all the boring bits of command from the get-go.”

In the wake of her departure, Pike heads down the hill. The slope is steep and the grass is soft, calf-high, a little slippery. It’s so different to Mojave; so much like Elysium.

As he reaches the point where the ground begins to flatten out, three crew in blue shirts and one in red appear at the top of the next hill. Even from here he can tell that one of them is Tilly; her hair stands out against the sky and the grass and her own uniform. The faint sound of laughter carries on the breeze.

At the sight of her, his own PADD burns a hole in the palm of his hand; heavy with her reported conclusions, received and read.

He swallows his nerves away and turns, finds his Science Officer. Spock is working at a portable station; Pike can see him through the virtual screen, visible behind reams of data, posture as ramrod straight as ever.

“Having a good day, Commander?”

Spock doesn’t pause in his work.

“If _good_ on this occasion means productive, then yes. I am having a _good day_.”

His words are couched in verbal quotation marks, and Pike is amazed, as ever, by Spock’s ability to lace sarcasm into a monotone.

Pike rounds the screen to join him. There are three feeds; one from each team spread across the landscape. Their names head each column. He can see Tilly’s on the left-hand side.

Spock isolates a data set, enlarges it.

“The planet is extremely mineral rich, with a wide diversity encountered even in these initial surveys. Pergium, tri-magnesite, galicite—”

“Is that—”

Pike points to a read-out. _Zi, atomic weight 318, atomic number 118._

“Zenite, yes. It appears Ardana is not the only source, as previously thought—”

The breeze picks up, whipping through the grass so that the whole landscape dances, and there’s that laughter again, louder for the strength of the wind. Pike tightens his fingers involuntarily, and Spock notices.

It’s like being a kid caught reading late at night by his mother; like being a teenager found kissing one of his high school girlfriends in the library stacks. He can’t remember which book, or which girl, but the feeling remains.

“You are tense, Captain.”

Along with sarcasm, Spock has a talent for understatement.

Pike drops his hand, flexes his fingers.

“Yes.”

“And Commander Tilly is the source of your tension.”

“Can we—”

Pike glances around them. The crew seem intent on their work; but he knows how gossip starts, how it gets around a ship.

Spock considers him, that one eyebrow raised. He closes out the screen and swipes it away.

“Perhaps a walk, Captain. To observe the surface distribution of minerals.”

They head away. Not, Pike notices, in the way of the approaching party, or back up the hill behind them, but further along the dip between; the direction in which they’re least likely to encounter Tilly or Number One. It’s a small gesture of privacy, can only be deliberate. Can only be a kindness from a friend.

They walk for twenty or thirty metres in silence. The landscape begins to flatten from this outlook; they can see the grass stretch on and on until it meets a lake so large the other side is barely visible.

Pike stops, nudges at a stone beneath his boot. “So. Minerals.”

“A ruse. This area has already been surveyed.”

It kicks a laugh out of Pike’s chest. Spock folds his hands behind his back, observes the view, but Pike has at least some notion of understanding his friend; suspects that Spock is pleased by his reaction.

“Well then. You might as well hit me with it.”

“Hit you with what, Captain?”

Pike’s nerves find him again; tinged with anticipated shame, with the expectation of a scolding. He has the sudden wish to be holding a beer; at least then he’d have something to do with his hands.

Instead he crosses his arms and watches the cloudless sky.

“You don’t need to pretend,” he says. “Whatever you’re going to say, I’m ready.”

“I have no opinion to voice unless it is asked for.” Spock fixes him with that nerveless stare. “I simply believed that you might need someone to confide in.”

 _That_ , Pike was not ready for. It sticks his in his throat, makes him close his eyes for a few fractions of a second past a blink.

He swallows and clears his throat. “Probably.”

“I take it from your reaction that you have not shared your anxieties with Number One.”

Una knows, would even if he hadn’t told her; she has a way of looking at him like she can see every thought in his head whilst her own remain out of reach. But it’s been hard to verbalise, and no matter how often he replays their conversation— _you like her_ —he’s still afraid. He can’t stomach the idea of looking at his oldest friend and seeing disapproval. Or worse, disappointment. _You weren’t careful enough._

He kicks the stone away into the grass and says, “It’s complicated.”

“It often seems to be.” _With humans_ is unspoken, loud and clear.

Voices hum in the background; a crew at work. The suns will begin to set in a half-hour, maybe less. He’s been told the twilight will last long into the night.

“If I have inferred the nature of your relationship correctly,” Spock begins, “then you are not acting outside of the rules. Commander Tilly is no longer your subordinate. Any previous societal factors which might invite comment no longer apply—”

“That’s one way of summarising it, yeah—”

“And you are both highly professional individuals. I do not believe, Captain, that you would embark on a course of action if you thought it might jeopardise your command.”

Spock stops, and the rustle of grass in the breeze fades up. Pike wants so desperately to think of this in terms which are as black and white as Spock’s words; but every single moment he’s spent in that liminal space, where she seems to matter more than the work, rolls back to him. The anticipated shame burns.

“No,” Spock continues. “The danger lies in the emotional fallout.”

Pike tilts his head, glances sideways. His fingers tighten over his own crossed arms.

“Is this—are we having the _if you hurt her_ conversation?”

“On the contrary. I am concerned that she will hurt you.”

At first the concept bounces off Pike’s skull like weapons off a shield. He opens his mouth, closes it again; frowns.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It is a perfectly possible outcome. Commander Tilly’s own mission has been predicated on the idea that one day, she will leave. Her permanent departure will be the measure of its success.”

Those black and white words again. This time, they are a knife wound.

_Of your own making._

Pike clears his throat; begins to walk. He realises that Spock isn’t following, and looks back, tilts his head in encouragement.

“I wasn’t walking away from you. Just—away.”

Spock falls into step beside him, and they follow the gentle slope of the ground, down towards the far-off lake. The twin suns creep towards its surface, and the grass whispers against their boots, rustling underfoot.

“You had not considered the detriment to your own wellbeing.”

Pike shakes his head.

“In retrospect, I should have expected that, with your—personality.”

Pike smiles, just a little. No one can time a pause like Spock.

The crew sound far away now, barely audible, and Pike glances back to see them moving around the camp, bright in their primary colours. It reminds him of the market in Elysium’s capital, with the street theatre set up for the kids; of watching little wooden puppets move across the stage whilst his mother was somewhere else, bartering over groceries. He can taste the scent of hot food and fresh fruit in the air like he’s nine years old all over again.

“Captain.” Spock’s tone is the same one he uses when there are multiple voices in the conversation and he wants to cut through them, straight to Pike’s attention. In the empty air, it sounds urgent. “I understand that there was a report.”

Code 47 doesn’t indulge Spock, one rank too low for inclusion; but the fact he knows doesn’t surprise Pike at all.

“There was. I read it.”

“Then I assume that Commander Tilly has succeeded, and she will leave.”

The nerves which have been butterflying inside Pike all day flare, burn along his limbs like wildfire. In truth they’ve been burning since Tilly stood in his ready room and asked if he was afraid. Maybe even before that; from the first moment they let themselves lie to each other, to themselves. _Can we pretend that it’s not complicated? Just for a while?_

“It’s a conversation I need to have with her.” Pike clears his throat. “Will have with her. Today. And don’t worry about the ship,” he adds, reaching out, palm up, as though he can wipe Spock’s concerns straight out of the air. “This stays—” _At home_ is the wrong phrase, even as he wishes it wasn’t. “This stays out of my work. Away from the _Enterprise_.”

“I am not concerned for the ship. If Starfleet restricted all those with emotional strain from command, there would be few experienced captains left in the fleet. And your behaviour in the course of this affair—” and Pike winces, to hear it said aloud like that, “—has clearly not given me reason for unease, as I did not notice it. Indeed, for someone with high emotionality your control is admirable. But.”

Spock never fidgets—never moves his hands, never quirks his mouth, never looks down at the floor—but he has tells. A slight knitting of his brows; not enough for a frown, too much to be meaningless. Now, it furrows just so.

“I suspect you may come to find there is an emotional burden. A price to pay, if you will.” He turns from the view, fixes Pike with that calm, steady look. “When the burden comes, you will not have to bear it alone.”

Pike’s lungs tighten.

“That’s—” he begins, gulping down fresh air. “How do I respond to that?”

The furrow deepens. “I do not understand.”

“I just—”

Pike’s throat burns, and for a grateful moment it’s less about the waiting heartache and more about something he has _here_ ; a tangible, anchored connection which isn’t marred by time or illusion.

He shakes his head, mouth kicking into a grin.

“Just—thanks. Thank you.”

Spock nods, a soft acknowledgement.

“As I have been informed, that is, apparently, what friends are for.”


	9. Iota

The setting suns throw up blood-colored light, streaking the sky pale red, orange, lilac. The lake reflects it; the water and sky join at their edges, and it makes the horizon look rounded, convex, like the luminous surface of a bubble.

Pike stops at the edge of the set-up. Spock pauses with him, raises an eyebrow in query. Pike nods; _go on_.

Alone, he watches the activity. The blue and violet wavelengths of light in the sky are scattering, receding, turning the hour golden, and the survey teams are burnished by it as they decant their equipment, as they upload and parse their data.

Ops have constructed a base to see the survey through the next two weeks; it sprawls over twenty square meters, divided between polymer-nylon sleeping tents and the glinting edges of portable consoles. Just at a glance he can count astrobiology, exozoology, exoentomology, exobotony. The weather models predict temperate conditions, and Pike wonders how many of the crew will sit out in the long twilight, eschewing their tents. He feels a wistful pang for his Ensign days, and shuts it down.

Tilly has her back to him. Her hair is picked out like copper wires by the light, and as she moves the ends of her curls bounce. She's marshaling her team, PADD in hand, and it reminds him, strongly and viscerally, of Number One.

"Adeyemi," she says, pointing to a Lieutenant with a cargo container. "I know you're trying, but a little steadier on your feet, please, those samples are fragile, okay?"

She glances down to make a note; must catch him in the corner of her eye. He sees the hesitation in her profile; the way her gaze skitters off the screen and into the grass beyond, like she's deciding whether to look up.

"Captain."

It's one word, two syllables, and he hears it all the time; but it's never the same, not in her voice.

This time it's carefully flat, controlled, matching the way her mouth is pressed into a fine line. A moment, and then she faces him fully, tucks her hands behind her back. There's a weight to the air, a resisted confrontation that simmers with everything they don’t want to talk about. _The Red Angel project can expect to be reinitiated within the next—_

They're both still on the clock, so he nods to the crew behind her and says, trying for a tone that’s gentle: "Don't let me interrupt."

Tilly follows his sight line towards her team, then back.

"It’s alright, they’re almost done. We’re just cataloguing what needs to go back with the shuttle. We actually found some really beautiful plants and fungi up beyond that ridge—”

She points with the hand still clutching her PADD, shields her eyes against the golden light with the other.

“Good. I thought you’d enjoy some astromycology.”

The corner of her mouth twitches.

“I am, thank you for the assignment. Really, it’s a nice break.” She drops her hand. Neither of them say what work she is breaking from. “I guess you’re returning with the shuttle?”

He catches a waver in her voice, an uncertainty he hasn’t heard in a long time. It adds to the unreality; to the sense that something is ending, that they won’t get it back.

“She needs her Captain,” he says, throwing a nod up to the temporary star _Enterprise_ has made in the sky.

Tilly presses her mouth back into that fine line, but she doesn’t say anything. The hum and murmur of the crew working nearby fills in, the rumble of productivity and exploration and progress; the reasons Starfleet is here in the first place.

In the noisy silence, the gap between them feels palpable, in sharper relief than it’s ever been.

“Commander,” he says, weighting the word. “We need to discuss this.”

“Sir—”

“Because I’m the CO, and I need to know how this affects my crew’s resources and mission schedule.”

“I know—”

“And frankly—” God, he can _feel_ the bitterness in his voice, regrets it even as he continues, “—we should have had this conversation two days ago.”

She sighs, grimaces, scratches the end of her nose. It’s so infuriatingly endearing; stirs that exact feeling in his chest which prevented him from saying this when he should have. Her panic, her pacing steps, her hands curled into the fabric of his uniform. _Are you afraid?_

Guilt edges Pike’s frustration; his own self-recrimination, turned on her. Personal feelings bleeding into professional conflict, just as he’d promised himself they wouldn't.

This was only ever going to be temporary.

“We were given other priorities,” Tilly says.

_Sir, we’re in close proximity to a Class M planet. Should we alter course?_

It’s the mission. _Ex astris, scientia._ From the stars, knowledge.

Pike sighs. “Yes. Yes, you were.”

He steps back from his resentment; roots its cause out from his heart. _Are you afraid_ , she’d asked him, and now—looking at somebody he loves, knowing she’ll leave him—now, he understands why he’d said _yes_.

“I’ll need a schedule.” He works to keep the sigh from his voice; to soften its edge, sharpened by expectant grief. “So I can plan, going forward.”

Her posture eases; the line of her shoulders, stiff under her uniform, drops.

“I’ll have one, soon, now that the silica’s taken, I should be—I should be able to give you a deadline.”

 _A closing door_.

He nods, staccato, looks at the grass beneath his feet. They could be anywhere; could just be two people in SoCal, hiking through savanna in the San Jacinto mountains. The possibility of that life seems simple, and far away.

“Good.” The word is dry in his mouth. “Good.”

“I—”

Tilly stops, bites her lip. Her eyes are wide and watchful. He can see her thinking; can see her feelings bleeding out of her, thickening the air. It makes her look as young as he remembers.

The silence is soundtracked by the clang of metal instruments and slammed-shut cargo containers. He wants to reach across the space—physical, emotional, either or both—but even here, on the edge of the work, they’re surrounded by colleagues and crew who don’t know; can’t know. A realisation crowds him, sharp and unrelenting, that he wants to kiss her in air which isn’t recycled, isn’t purified for the vacuum of space, and he can’t. Won’t ever be able to.

Secrets don’t survive in the open air.

Pike swallows all his thoughts; says, instead, without quite meaning to: “I haven’t slept well.”

Tilly nods, then shakes her head.

“No, me neither.”

He wants to ask if the space in her bed down here felt as empty as the one in his, up there; but Tilly's PADD beeps. It’s a Pavlovian response that he understands, to check it immediately; but the loss of her attention spikes irrational rage which rises in his throat like bile.

Pike swallows, clawing it back.

“The shuttle, it’s loading the samples soon,” Tilly says, shifting the PADD between her hands. “They’ll need me.”

“Of course.”

Neither of them move. Tilly’s eyes dart around his face like a substitute for contact, touching him the way her hands can’t; desperately, with a deep well of feeling that neither of them have accounted for.

“I’ll be back.” she says, and even though he knows her meaning it sparks irrational hope for something with _permanence_. “At the end of the week? And I’ll—I’d like to come by.”

For those who might catch them on the breeze, it’s simple enough—in his ready room, or on the bridge, maybe, a run-of-the-mill meeting between Captain and Specialist—but he feels the remembered heat of her, enveloping him, and the cold space in his empty bed. Feels her laughter inside his own chest; her words and thoughts and dreams, colourful in the dark.

“Sure. We can arrange some time.”

She nods with that half-smile; the one with the bitten lip that makes her look sad.

“Well then, I guess—I should get back to work.”

She turns, slowly, eyes on him for a long moment. Finally she has to look away; has to walk away, too, and he watches her go, counting down the seconds until his stare becomes too inappropriate, too obvious.

He knows that she won’t glance back—too much of a risk, too much to give themselves away—but he finds himself hoping anyway. 


	10. Kappa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter borrows and twists a little of the backstory from the Pike-centric novel [Burning Dreams](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Burning_Dreams), including mention of some complicated family dynamics.

It’s mutually exclusive, how Pike feels about the week passing; too fast, towards an impending deadline, and not fast enough, keeping her from him. Time, though, doesn’t care for his feelings either way; passes quick-slow and cruelly.

When the last day ends he is wound tight, enough that Una raises her eyebrows at the end of their shift. He has to shake the query away and blame it on lack of sleep. Technically true, with the added bonus that he’s not lying to his oldest friend; but Una only pats his arm gently and says, “You can tell me when you’re ready.”

His quarters are, somehow, even emptier now that he knows Tilly is back on board. Pike strips his uniform and showers until his water ration cuts out, just to pass the time, and then he shaves his five-o’clock shadow and combs through his hair like he’s on the other end of his shift. He certainly feels more awake than he did this morning.

He’s just shucked on fresh clothes when his PADD chimes. It’s a personal channel, rather than professional.

TILLY, S. [PERSONAL] Come to mine?  20:37:13 REPLY 

Pike stares at it for a moment. Captains are afforded more privacy by default—he’s thought of it as an unspoken rule that they only ever do this _here_ , beyond watchful eyes and busy corridors—but there are so few places in the universe where he can freely touch her, and the idea of adding to the list burns, a little flame of joy. Time is shortening, tensing like a taut rope, and his recklessness grows.

Tilly’s quarters were hastily repurposed from the diplomats’ wing, and Pike finds himself thankful to whatever his father believed in that _Enterprise_ is at full, every-cabin-is-taken crew complement. This deck is sparsely populated—diplomats, he’s found, are reluctant to take on the frontier, and guests are thin on the ground—so he waits for a few seconds, catching breath he hasn’t exerted. It’s strange to be on this side of the door. He’s nervous.

Tilly smiles so widely when she sees him that Pike feels stupid for it. His heart speeds up for a different reason, and all those days of waiting evaporate, like they were never there at all.

The door shuts behind him, and her hands drift up along his chest, rest on his shoulders. She looks a little tired, but her smile makes her glow.

“Hello,” she says.

He smiles. “Hi.”

Here, where they’re hidden from the world, it’s so _natural_ to lean down to kiss her; to dig gentle fingers into her waist; to press close and _stay_ there, when she’s wound her fingers into his hair and he’s hummed his own greeting against her mouth.

 _Talk first_ , he reminds himself; but that was an easier promise when he was alone. Tilly is warm and soft, and something about her physicality feels—fundamental; like a piece of himself he was missing before.

Her fingers skim the edge of his off-duty uniform, creep under. His breath is forced short by her palms trailing higher, gently forcing his shirt up and over his head. It catches, and she’s laughing as she helps him tug it the last few inches, then down off his arms to be discarded without thought.

“Well,” she says, combing her fingers through his hair. It’s still a little shower-damp, and now it’s mussed too. “I don’t think it complies with the uniform code, but I like it.”

The compulsion to kiss her is, for a moment, so strong that it paralyses him; but then he does, slow and deep, pressing his palm into her back with enough force to bend her like a reed. It almost overbalances them, and they stumble until they hit her bed, fall hard ( _and isn’t that the truth_ , he thinks; so far and so fast they didn't have time to think).

 _Talk first_ , he reminds himself.

"We should—"

She stills beneath him. Her shoulder is bare where he's pulled her shirt down with greedy hands; her lips are already blushed pink, made full by the force of his mouth on hers. It stirs that wild possessiveness, the lurching feeling in his chest that says _mine_.

"Hey." She reaches up to hold his face. "Leave it on the other side of the door tonight."

She's asked him this before, in different ways; _let's pretend it's not complicated; let's be selfish, just this once. S_ ome part of him recognises the cycle, knows that in the end putting off reality will only make things worse. He wonders how much of it lies in her compulsion to save people from pain; whether it's to save herself or him.

He wants to ask her a thousand things—how long will it take; how far will she travel; what her heart will be leaving behind—but their lives are constricting down to the singular point of her departure and everything that will entail. Years, distance, the secret of _Discovery_ that will fling its crew to the far corners of the galaxy.

Because even if she comes back, if they _all_ come back, Command have made themselves clear. In the space between _goodbye_ and _hello_ they filed their response to the report, and gave no room for argument. They’ve indulged Tilly's stay on _Enterprise_ because it benefits them; the same will not be said of the rest of their treasonous secret. _Discovery_ will be destroyed. There will be new names, new identities; new and separate lives for all the crew.

Even if she wins, he will lose her.

Tilly kisses the line of his jaw, the corner of his mouth, and her words— _leave it_ —are their own seduction.

He turns his face in her hands, presses his lips to the heel of her palm. The lights are bright; Pike can see every faint line in her skin, every fleck of blue in her eyes.

"You're right," he murmurs. "We have time."

Not much; but it’s theirs.

Her mouth twists at the corners, curling up a little, even as something in her gaze seems—sad. Wistful.

"Yes.” Tilly brushes her thumb along the line of his cheekbone. “We have time."

* * *

They take it with each other; touch slowly, unhurried. Her hands travel over his skin like she’s making imprints, etching him into her memory, and in the exchange of touch and taste and sighs he feels _part_ of something; like a half of it. Whatever has bloomed between them, in this moment it’s bigger than science and god and the galaxy.

* * *

“What were you like? When you were a kid, I mean.”

He looks down to the gift of Tilly’s profile. Her back is sticky with sweat against his chest, and her hair fixes to him where she’s cradled in the curve of his arm. Her skin is delightfully flushed, shiny in the bright light.

Her quarters are smaller than his, but there’s still a couch, a small table, a desk, and Pike’s gaze tracks absently across them as he considers the answer. It’s colourful, and there are more personal touches than he’d expected; things Tilly’s picked up over weeks and months and a more-than year with them. Now there’s a little terrarium of soil and moss and fungi from the survey planet, perched on a shelf.

“Curious,” he says. “Too smart. Angry.”

“Angry?”

The ghosts of Elysium raise their heads, invade the room. His stepfather’s obsessive work ethic; his mother’s slowly winding despair. Being worlds away from his father for two years, just because the adults couldn’t work their problems out between them.

“Family dynamics,” he says, with the short smile he's perfected over years of coming to terms with it.

Tilly exhales, the kind of sound which stands in for _oh boy_. “Tell me about it.”

“Your mom?”

She's mentioned the specter of her mother in brief moments, in a tone that says more than her words do.

Tilly nods. "It was—a lot."

It has, unbelievably, reached the point where he forgets that Tilly wasn't always as confident as she is now; that the firm cadence of her voice, the straight line of her shoulders, the up-tilt of her chin are new. He racks his memory for the nervous Ensign, eyes on the floor, stumbling across words, and tries to imagine that minus ten, minus fifteen; the scared and lonely child she might once have been.

“Did you—” he begins, as it strikes him that her mother is probably still—

“Look her up? I—yeah, yes, I did.”

Tilly traces patterns on his thigh, stares past the both of them to a world he can’t see. Her profile knits with a faint frown.

“You can tell me anything,” Pike says, tongue heavy around the words. They feel trite, not enough to convey his meaning. He’d willingly dive into her soul if she’d let him.

“I couldn’t get too close, she has no idea I’m even alive, but I just—I asked Command to check in on her, and I tried to work out if she might be happy, you know? Turns out she’s retired off to a moon, the one where it’s summer all the time? And she always talked about doing that, so.” Tilly’s nails keep tracing their pattern on his skin. “It’s not—well. It’s not my place to unbalance a life she’s built in the belief I’m dead and gone. And besides, the last fifteen years, they—they taught me how to leave things behind.”

A pause, before she tilts her head up, meets his eye. Her hand leaves his thigh; traces the line of his jaw with the backs of her fingers. “I thought it had, anyway.”

Pike closes his hand over hers; presses his thumb into the center of her palm, gently, and her fingers unfurl like a blooming flower.

“Remember.” He touches his lips to each fingertip, murmurs against her skin. “It’s on the other side of the door.”

Her eyes travel over his face, map the features. There’s a serenity which seems to have settled on Tilly, smoothing her worry lines, making new the shine of her youth.

“I love you,” she says, as calmly as though she were asking for the time.

 _So much for temporary_ , Pike thinks. He’d expected this moment to burn, to scorch through him like flash fire; but he feels only a quiet, peaceful certainty.

He pushes a strand of hair from her face and kisses her lightly, like a promise.

"I love you," he says; has thought it so often that it feels like the millionth time and not the first.

Tilly's serenity breaks into a wide grin. She takes up the promise, twisting and shifting to press him back into his bed, to kiss him with hunger and joy. He catches the softness of her in his hands, fingers digging into her waist and her hips and her thighs. He's spent so much of his adult life in a career that starves you for touch, and now it's all he can think about.

When Tilly leans up, hands pressed to the bed on either side of his shoulders, her hair haloes them both, and she smiles inside the space it makes.

"I thought I knew everything about this timeline," she says, "but—I guess things are still surprising me, huh?"

A flash of the future Pike hopes she never sees—pain and fire and the horror of his own face—but for once that's all it is, a brief echo. Pike pushes it away like it's smoke.

"I'm glad I'm not dreaming," he tells her; wonders how to convey the chequered history of his heart when Tilly frowns, softly, confused.

“I—” he begins.

She nuzzles the hollow of his throat, kisses along his jaw and his cheek and the sweep of his brow.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

It’s an inverse of his own words— _you can tell me anything_ —but their meaning is the same. Support. Respect. Saying _I love you_ in a different way.

“No. I want to.”

Tilly folds her hands on his chest, rests her chin in the rise and fall of her knuckles. She watches him patiently, openly. It makes his past feel vague, easy. Less of a betrayal for loving someone who wasn’t her.

He tries to put Vina into words; to express the part of his heart she’s still buried in, how it’s faded with time like a scar that will never be completely gone, even if all it left behind is something numb.

“The point is, I never knew what was real. No matter how strongly I felt, I could never be sure.” He touches Tilly’s arm, her hair, her face; all the tangible, corporeal, mortal flesh of her. “Not like I’m sure now.”

She watches him still with that open, forgiving face. How she can love a tired, gray-haired man like him will never cease to be a wonder.

Pike thinks of the long grass on the survey planet, the sound of it brushing against his boots; the same as the grass in the field behind their house, buried in the plains outside Elysium City, and the way it whispered when he ran through it in the long summer hours after school.

“If things were—” _Different_ , his pause says, “—I’d take you to this place I lived when I was a kid. Elysium. The memories aren’t great,” _His mother crying, his stepfather railing, his father too far away, too preoccupied to rescue him_ , “but it was—it was beautiful. I’d take you hiking in the hills and we’d walk on the beaches and go to the market in the city.”

Tilly smiles. “I’d like that.”

“There was an old man who sold moba fruit and clavisoa berries to tourists for too much money. My mother could barter him down to a price like nobody else.”

Her smiles widens. “Now I know where you learned to negotiate.”

“It’s true,” he laughs. His first lesson, long before Starfleet.

Tilly tilts her head, leans into where his fingers are tangled in her hair.

“You’re still curious, you know.”

For a split-second he’s thrown, and then Pike recalls; _curious, too smart, angry_.

“Yeah,” he smiles. “And it gets me into trouble.”

 _This kind of trouble_ , he thinks, overwhelmed with affection, with how real and soft and warm she is under his hand and over his heart.

“Maybe.” When Tilly speaks her chin presses into her folded hands, and they push against his sternum like morse code. “But it’s wonderful, to still have that, that—fire for the unknown. I honestly don’t know that I’d love you so much if you didn’t.”

It’s like a flood sweeping through a valley; now that the word has passed their lips they can’t seem to stop using it. Pike pulls gently at her arms until she unfolds herself, until he can sit her up and guide her to where he wants. Tilly indulges him; makes herself malleable as he settles her hips across his, as he runs his hands down along her thighs to her knees where they dig into the bed, where they bracket his ribs. The entire time, her face is gentle with trust.

“I—” he starts, but she leans down to kiss him, shifts in a way that jackknifes his breath; and then they’re fumbling, hands clumsy with lust, until his only thought is the heat of her and the way she moves above him and the hurried little breaths she takes. They come quicker and quicker until she throws her head back, exposing the sweat-shined line of her throat, and the breaths alter into a low, thick moan that flutters through her entire body, right to where he can feel it _just so_.

 _Stay_ , he thinks; wants to say it, as she presses her palms against his skin for leverage, as the only sounds are their breathing and their bodies. Maybe she knows, reads it in the bite of his fingers into her flesh. She rolls her head forward again, pliant with released pleasure, and keeps his gaze as she slides her fingers under his, laces them together.

“I’m here,” she says, breathless in a way that makes his heart thud. She squeezes his hands. “I’m here.”

Everything crescendoes through him—separate pasts and joined presents and known-unknown futures—and his nerve-ends burn away, leave him gasping and fractured.

Tilly shifts, lets go; presses herself flat against him, face hidden against his throat. Her lips brush his jumping pulse when she speaks, a sated murmur. “I’m here.”

He doesn’t want to stop touching her, even now. His hands linger on her back, trail along her spine.

“Yes,” he hums. “Still here.”

He doesn’t know if the affirmation is for her or himself. Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.

* * *

When Pike wakes again it must be late; but they fell asleep with the lights on, and the glare pierces his closed eyelids, makes him instinctively frown, throw an arm across his face. His sleep-slow brain is anxious, and he breathes slowly once, twice, in preparation for confronting the task.

The anxiety twists, clarifies into what his subconscious was sensing, and the slow breath turns into a sharp inhale, into snapped-open eyes. He reaches for something which is no longer there, and his hands find only rumpled sheets and dented pillows.

Tilly has left an empty space beside him.


	11. Lambda

“Computer, security access Delta-Five-Seven-One-Nine.”

He tugs his pants on, yanks his shirt back over his head.

_Security access granted._

“Computer, locate Commander Sylvia Tilly.”

_Commander Sylvia Tilly is currently located in Shuttle Bay 5._

Pike’s heart thuds, pierced with panic. “ _Shit_.”

He checks the time; midway through Gamma shift, as close as they ever get to the middle of the night on _Enterprise_. A pared-down skeleton crew to keep things ticking over; the emptiest and easiest time to do things without oversight.

His breath stutters in his chest as he pulls his boots on, as he tries to catch his bearings. Tilly’s quarters look like she just stepped out for a moment; she’s even picked her clothes off the floor and folded them across the back of the desk chair. Nothing is missing or out of place, except for her.

“Computer, command override Alpha-Theta-One, Pike, Captain Christopher.”

_Command override enabled_.

“Shut down all access to Shuttle Bay 5 systems without my authorisation, effective immediately.”

_Shuttle Bay 5 systems access shutdown initiating._

“Shit,” he whispers to himself again. “Shit.”

_Shutdown complete._

The journey around the innards of the ship is infinite, time stretching out to mock him. He’s always thought it was Tilly falling down the rabbithole, but it’s Pike who feels inside out and upside down. His endorphins still race with sex and love and safety, but now they clash with his adrenaline, fuelled by fear.

The turbolift spits him out on R Deck. It’s empty; only the faint clang and murmur of work in another bay, somewhere beyond. The doors to Shuttle Bay 5 loom, stay shut on his approach. He can see the red light on the left-hand door panel; locked by his override, until he decides otherwise.

Pike waits, catches his breath. Barely hours ago he’d stood outside Tilly’s door doing the same thing; except this time, when he steps through, he cannot expect the same smile, the same soft words and kisses. Cannot expect—anything, he realises. There is no framework for how this confrontation goes.

Because that’s what it is, chasing down a rogue officer. A confrontation. The motive won’t matter, later.

_It will matter to me_ , he thinks; tries to push down the dread winding through his heart, mixed up with love.

He swipes his command override into the system. The doors slide open with a familiar hiss.

The lights are low, as though this is only night maintenance. For a moment his chest fills with frightened hope; that the computer has got this wrong, or that Tilly is here for some other, yet-to-be-explained reason. Except—

He recognises the suit; the way it catches the soft glow of the light panels, the way the plates fit and slide as Tilly moves. She’s in a corner at the far end, swiping through a console screen which has a star chart painted across it. Beyond her, the bay doors are stuck half-open on the expanse of space. The stars are distorted only by the faint, electronic glow of the barrier between them and asphyxiation.

Her face is clear; she hasn’t activated the helmet, but her hair is tied back ready, twisted into a tight bun. The stars halo her, and Pike is slammed with the memory of that first night, sat in the mess hall, watching them streak by at warp speed behind her head. _Welcome back; I missed you._

His boots echo in the empty bay. Tilly keeps staring at her console, mouth in a taut line. She knows he’s here— _must_ know—but the only sign is the way her shoulders tense with each footstep.

When he’s a meter away, Pike stops.

“You shut down the systems access,” Tilly says.

Her voice echoes in the empty bay. It’s flat, tightly controlled; tense.

She replaces a cover on the suit’s chest panel, presses it into place with her palm. Pike’s stomach drops. His heart thuds so loudly he’s sure she’ll hear it, and the silence swirls, filled with the engines’ hum; louder here, closer to Engineering.

“I guess this is the deadline,” he bites out. “The end of your project.”

Tilly’s hands finally fall from the star chart. Her calm exterior breaks inside the twist of her mouth, in the way it dips into a sad line. She doesn’t look at him.

“You always sleep so well,” she replies at last. The sadness infuses the words. “I didn't think you’d wake up.”

He barks an angry laugh, feels the sharpness of it on his own tongue. _Only when you’re there_ , he wants to snap; wants to rage about the deep and dreamless nights she’s gifted him, free from the future he can’t contain.

The anger flares and burns. Some other part of his psyche ticks like a clock, reminds him that this time— _their_ time—is falling away, reducing down to minutes and seconds; that he shouldn’t waste it on fury. But it feels righteous; feels earned.

“So you—what,” he scoffs. “You decided to save me the pain?”

_Let's pretend it's not complicated. Let's be selfish, just this once._ Now he knows where that cycle ends; where it makes things worse.

“Yes.”

The word is sharp, simple; cuts him, knife-like. He waits out of habit, expecting more, because with Tilly there is always more—but she only goes back to her star chart; to the mourning line of her mouth.

Out of everything, her silence is what unbalances him. His anger dulls, subsumed by unease. In this quiet, empty moment, Tilly is the furthest she’s ever seemed from herself.

“That’s not your call,” he says, and his voice escapes softly, shaped by sudden and overwhelming exhaustion.

“Why?” she bites. “Why can’t it be?”

At last—at last—her shoulders drop, and her head too. Pike sees her back heave with an unsteady exhale from pursed lips, and Tilly squeezes her eyes shut, shakes her head.

“Why?” she repeats.

Her voice is low and worn out. It eats away at the last of his fury; fades it into a sense memory, into a sadness that hangs heavy around his neck. He reaches a hand up to massage the muscles there, to dig fingers into the base of his skull. The pressure stays, stubbornly unrelieved.

Tilly glances up. Her eyes travel over him, across the same off-duty uniform she peeled away only hours ago.

_I love you_ , she’d said. It feels like every one of those fifteen years exists between then and now.

“It’ll hurt anyway.” He steps closer. “And waking up to find you already gone would be—”

Pike swallows. The words falter, twist his tongue. _It would be even worse than this._ He doesn’t want to say it out loud, as though the air vibrations will make it real. Time has done stranger things to him than make his fears come true.

“That’s the thing, I—it wouldn’t have been worse, I _know_ it wouldn’t have been, I planned it that way and I—”

Her words come up short, hit a brick wall. She shakes her head.

“I already made it clear,” he says. “You don’t get to decide. You don’t get to say you love me—” and Pike’s heart squeezes, twists, “—and then just _leave_.”

_Leave_. It echoes, high up against the walls and ceiling, rippling back to them; but before he’s had time to process the ache it stirs, bone-deep and endless, Tilly’s console beeps. She glances to the star chart, a sharp turn of her head that speaks to anxious anticipation. One of the planets is highlighted red, pulsing gently.

“Wait.” Pike recognises the pattern of stars; frowns. “Is that—is that Essof IV?”

On the screen, the stars around the planet rearrange themselves to match the stardate above. He reads it; counts backward.

Understanding catches Pike like an uppercut to the jaw.

“You’re not jumping forward.”

His voice is as strained as the last time a lover knocked him for six. _Vina—how—_

Tilly turns back to the console. “No.”

She’s brusque again, short-syllabled and stark-toned. There’s something deeper at their edge, too; the rawness of tears building before a fall.

She adjusts the suit, bends her arm as though to look at a watch. The forearm panel lights up with a small touchscreen, and she pulls over the read-out from the console before swiping past. The data reflects the wet shine in her eyes; a thousand-thousand lines of code to break time in half.

“Is that why?” he asks quietly. “Is that why you left me asleep?”

_Because if this works—because if you go back_ — _I won’t remember?_

A beat; a breath.

“Yes.”

Pike’s shoulders sink, heavier and heavier. He hadn’t realised how desperate he was for her answer to be no.

_Backward_ , she’d said, perched on the couch in his ready room, beaten and bruised and so much older than the last time he’d seen her. _It only ever let me go backward._

“How long have you known?”

It comes out dry and cracked. At last Tilly faces him, lowers her arm. The read-out disappears automatically.

“I suspected? For a long time, _hoped_ for a long time, too, that I could fix the crystal enough, fix the suit enough to go forward instead of jumping back, but I—for a while. I’ve known for a while there was no other solution.”

_I had a breakthrough_ , she’d said, pacing in front of him, as unnerving as she is now, and he’d held her face too tightly as she’d asked, _are you afraid?_

“If you go back,” he says, slowly, working it out as he speaks. “You’ll change everything.”

“I know.”

“The universe. Everyone’s lives. All of it.”

“That’s the idea.”

“What is, Tilly? That you’ll stop _Discovery_ ’s sacrifice? That you’ll destroy Control? We had the best ship in the fleet on our side and we still couldn’t do any of that—”

“And? So what if it _is_ my plan? At least I can _try_ , because you’re not telling me anything I don’t know, okay? I’m not diving into this like some Ensign who’s two years out of the Academy—”

She bites her lip. _Like I was when we met_ hangs in the air, her unfinished sentence.

“You told me—” she begins. “You told me that _Discovery_ would have faith in me. That _you_ have faith in me. Don’t—don’t let that change now, just because—”

That tear which was threatening finally falls, leaves a trail down her cheek. She’s bare-faced, a little tired, just as she was when they tumbled into bed, and in the soft light, wet with tears, it makes her look twenty-four all over again.

Pike takes one step forward, and then another, and another until it’s an inch between them.

“It hasn’t changed,” he murmurs; reaches up, touches her hair. He wishes it was loose, that he could see it that way one last time. “It won’t.”

Another tear, gumming her lower lashes together until it gets too heavy, drops onto her cheek, rolls down. He brushes it away without thinking, rests his hand at her neck. The touch seems to let something go. Tilly’s spine loosens, her shoulders drop; she rests her head on his chest and breathes out. His other hand settles naturally at her back, and Pike tenses his fingers against the cold metal of the suit.

“It’s time-travel one-oh-one,” he says into her hair. “Don’t—”

“Crush the butterfly, speak to your grandparents, I know, I get it.” She sighs. “I understand the risks.”

_So you keep going and you manage the risks better tomorrow_. The taste of whisky on his tongue, Tilly haloed again by stars in the window. Had that been the first time he’d listened to her? _Really_ listened to her?

She leans back, looks up at him. He sees her smile lines, faint now that she’s frowning a little; that streak of gray threatening her hair. He knows, now, how soft her skin is beneath this metal and polymer and wiring. Every bit of evidence to remind him that, yes, Tilly has taken this risk before.

His heart still beats uncomfortably in his chest, and panic still rises—

“If you go back, you will change _your_ life.” Pike tries for calm, even as something is roiling inside his chest; an unlived grief approaching on the horizon, threatening like clouds. “You will change _this_ life.”

She’s watching him, eyes wide and piercing. Holding her breath, waiting to see if he’ll say it.

He squeezes the hand resting at the back of her neck, brings their heads together.

“You will change _our_ life.”

“I know,” she whispers. Her fingers dig into his arms, holding onto something intangible. “I know.”

Stolen moments. Recycled air. Secrets. Maybe it’s not much of one, but—

“Don’t,” she says, and he’s afraid of what will follow. “Don’t think that this—that _our life_ doesn’t matter to me enough, because it does—god, it matters so much that some days I can barely _breathe_ , but—it’s _Discovery_ out there, it’s our familyand they’re counting on me. I can change _their_ lives for the better. So, please.” She presses a light, pleading kiss against his mouth. “Please. Let me go.”

_Our family_ shifts and twists into a thought that sticks, stubborn: a house with a field behind it; a walk to the market for Moba fruit; a couple red-haired kids who talk fast and often, like their mother. He wants it so much that it hurts.

Tilly’s voice continues, soft, contained in the space between them. “Just—find something about your future you want to change and think of it, okay? Because that’s how we get through this.”

The house and the market and the children burn through with fire, pain, with the well-trod horror of his own face. Pike feels it like a never-ending weight on his shoulders.

And yet.

“I don’t want my future to change. Not when you’re in it.”

Tilly squeezes her eyes shut; presses her tears into the hollow of his throat.

“You’re making this so much harder,” she whispers there.

_Good_. The thought is sharp and bitter; stirs guilt up like ink swirling in water. He presses his palm against the cold metal of the suit, pushing her closer; as though, if he only gets physically near enough, he can take that dive inside her soul. Maybe that would make her stay.

A clear, sing-song sound from the panel at her wrist. Pike feels Tilly turn her head beneath the line of his jaw, breathe long and deep against his skin once, twice. His arms tense in anticipation. He feels her body do the same, and then Tilly is stepping back; stepping away.

“It’s the—it’s the crystal, it’s charged.” Her voice cracks, and she clears her throat. “Ready to go.”

They stand in the empty shuttle bay, inches and years and fates apart. The loss of her warmth is more than he wants to cope with, and Pike fights hard not to feel like a child frightened by the dark, by the unknown laid out before him.

Instead he does the only thing which feels right. He straightens his shoulders, up-tilts his chin, calls up his training.

_Service, sacrifice, compassion, and love._

He clears his throat. “What will you do there? On Essof IV.”

Project Daedalus. Gabrielle Burnham, trapped by their will. Her daughter risking death to save her, asphyxiating in the toxic air.

Tilly’s mouth quirks, a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Things I don’t want you to remember.”

The words twist, and Pike has to look away for a moment. That the universe has led someone as good and kind as Tilly to _this_ —

Minutes and seconds, he reminds himself. _Don’t waste them._

“You need to cancel the command override,” she says softly. “So I can—”

She gestures to the stars beyond the containment field, framed by the half-open bay doors.

He nods; forces himself to open his mouth.

“Computer, disable command override Alpha-Theta-One, Pike, Captain Christopher.”

_Command override disabled_.

The consoles on the wall blink into life, and the creak and crank of tritanium sounds as the door mechanisms reinitialise. The containment field shimmers, a faint blue oscillation as the power surges.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“No, I—” She shakes her head. “I don’t want that to be the last time you see me, with _this_ —” and she waves her hand over her face, still clear of the helmet, “between us.”

He takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay.”

She closes her eyes. The tears have stopped, but a last one escapes, and she blinks, brushes it away with the heel of her palm.

“How do we do this?” she asks.

Pike shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

She lets out of a brief, huffed laugh. It’s so misplaced, clashes with their pain like discordant piano keys.

“I hate this,” Tilly says, voice thick with tears. “It sucks.”

A beat; and then he crowds her, holds her face in his hands, kisses her like—no, not like the first time. That had been slow and blushing and careful. This kiss is nothing like that.

“I love you,” he says in the breaths between.

She buries her hands in his hair, rough and desperate. “You’ll forget.”

“I won’t.” He shakes his head, kisses the promise into her mouth. “I won’t.”

Then—as quickly as he began, Pike tears away, steps back one stride, then two. His hands feel empty. He doesn’t know what to do with them.

Silence; just their breathing, just the hum of the ship.

“It’s okay,” Tilly says. She takes her own two steps back. Her voice is thick. “It’s okay to let go now.”

The moment stretches out. She is red hair and spark-bright eyes and wit and warmth and bravery, and he never wants to stop looking at her.

Tilly nods, the smallest gesture.

Pike turns, and walks away.

He doesn’t look back when he crosses the threshold, when the doors shut behind him, when he walks to the turbolift. He realises belatedly that his fingers are curled into his palms, digging blunt nails into flesh hard enough to hurt. His heart thuds, loud in his ears, a drumbeat for his thoughts.

“I won’t forget,” he tells the empty air. “I won’t forget, I won’t forget, I won’t—”

var y = ( --92 ) /\ (n = Essof-IV) =! y {stardate 1046.75}

var x = -0.5 * -800.484

assert jump(( ORIGIN[-(stardate n×y) - ( 96 )][N + ( -1 )] ) * DESTINATION) :

“—dead?”

On _Discovery_ ’s viewscreen, Tyler nods. “And not just dead, broken down with some kind of—at a guess this looks like it was done with a magnetic field?”

Pike shifts in the Captain’s chair, tries to find sense in it. “You’re telling me Leland is dead and someone disintegrated him with magnets.”

Tyler pauses. “I’m not so sure it’s Leland who’s dead, Sir.”


	12. Mu

“—so whoever it was, they used a magnetic field to essentially, well, _atomise_ the nanobots just after they’d infected Leland. See?”

Ensign Tilly points to the screen. The magnetic resonance has been mapped, with preliminary conclusions rolling next to it. There’s a human-shaped bio-simulation too, periodically deconstructing and reconstructing to demonstrate the effect.

Pike shifts in his seat at the head of the conference table; tries to put Leland’s face out of his mind. _It wasn’t Leland by then_ , he reminds himself, but it still strikes pity, sadness. His old friend deserved a better death than that.

Essof IV looms in the window, swirling with soft clouds. It makes the planet look gentle, safe; like the carbon monoxide and perchlorate dust which almost killed Burnham are just a child’s nightmare, sure to vanish with the dawn.

“So Control is neutralized?” she asks now. “We’re sure of that?”

Her tone is as sharp and enquiring as ever. Pike had told her to get some rest, to concentrate on her mother, on herself, but Burnham is nothing if not stubbornly confident in her ability to function under stress and pressure.

 _She’s doing well_ , Burnham had replied before the rest of the bridge crew filed in. _Thank you._ There’d been a smile playing at the edge of her mouth. If anyone should lay claim to this kind of good luck—a threat neutralised, a mother returned—Pike’s firmly of the opinion it belongs to Burnham.

At the other end of the room, Ensign Tilly nods.

“There’s still some protocols which have to be verified, but unofficially? Yes.”

The room seems to breathe as one. Saru puts a hand to the back of his neck, a habit yet to be broken; Reno mutters something probably profane; Nhan sags back in her chair like a weight has been physically removed. He sees Detmer and Owo fist-bump under the table, and tries not to smile.

“And the perpetrator?” Saru asks, hand still resting on the back of his neck.

Now Ensign Tilly shrugs. Her hair swings with the movement, somehow wild even in its ponytail. Pike finds the motion accidentally fascinating. He feels sometimes like the youngest member of his bridge crew is constantly in motion, one way or another.

“Nothing so far, the, uh—the security feed on the _NCIA-93_ was disabled, somehow? We’re still working on figuring _that_ out but there was, hold on, there was _one_ thing—”

She swipes something from her PADD up onto the viewscreen.

“Those are tachyon readings,” Rhys says.

“Uh huh. They were missed in the preliminary analysis because they were masked by Dr. Burnham’s own tachyon signature, it was super elevated because of the containment field and the gravitational instabilities, but I was doing a secondary comb-through and I noticed the point of origin in the future is—it’s different, see?”

The readings shift at the motion of her hand. The projected stardate is—

“Three or four years from now,” Pike says. “So, not Dr. Burnham in the 32nd century.”

“Another Red Angel?” Burnham asks. There’s a slight edge to her voice; the ghost of her own bio-neural signature buried in Airiam’s system. _Me?_

“Maybe? I need to find and identify the energy spike from their departure, so I’ll see if there’s anything else when I analyse the data again.”

Ensign Tilly smiles, a look meant only for her friend and the nerves she wants to soothe. Small things Pike’s noticed, but they’ve been building a picture of her all these months. Warmth and wit and bravery.

“Thank you, Ensign,” he says. “That’s good work.”

She blushes, nods, darts her eyes down to the floor and then back up over his head.

“It’s been good work by all of you,” he adds, stands up to address the table. “Whatever we do or don’t find out about our mysterious saviour, this situation would not have been handled without the dedication, capability, and skill of this crew. Of everyone in this room.” He lets his gaze meet each one of theirs. “You are all exemplary.”

Murmured _thank yous_ , grateful nods. Pike feels his heart swell. _Enterprise. Discovery._ He’s been so lucky.

* * *

Pike laughs when they’re moored at Starbase _Yorktown_ , rightnext to _Enterprise._

From this viewing platform, he can see both ships. Pike’s never had much opportunity to observe them side-by-side without other concerns pressing his attention away, and so he takes time over the differences, the similarities. The saucer sections are the same size, pretty much, but _Discovery_ ’s nacelles are elongated, making it look twice as big. The work is on the inside, too; now all three red bursts have been discovered and dealt with (and he can’t believe it was only three; the stress and work feels like there were at least seven), the Sphere data needs to be stripped from _Discovery_ ’s computer, secured safely somewhere within Starfleet.

“Happy to see her?” Kat asks.

“My ship? Always.”

He doesn’t specify which one. Kat notices; he can tell from the way she stares for a few extra seconds before turning to the window.

“We’ll need you back on _Enterprise_ in three weeks.”

Pike nods. He was expecting this.

“All systems—?”

“Back online, yes. And I hear Una gave Strat-Ops so much shit they folded and let her have some of the experimental tactical flyers.”

He huffs, affectionate laughter that warms his chest. “She’s had her eye on those.”

“Yeah, well, tell her not to get too trigger-happy. I don’t want my flagship accidentally starting another war.”

Down below, maintenance drones send up sparks repairing _Discovery_ ’s hull. There are burns and scrapes and nicks in the surface, all regular space debris damage. _Enterprise_ gleams next to her, almost new again, pearlescent in the bright overhead lights.

“How long do I have?”

“With _Discovery_? Seventy-two hours. They’ll be cleared to leave in five days and—”

“Saru needs to effect a proper handover.” Pike nods his agreement. “I understand.”

 _Starfleet wants preliminary talks,_ he'd said this morning, handing Saru the mission details (if not, for three days at least, the command). _Something about time crystals on Boreth?_

Kat leans against the window.

“She’s a wonderful ship. I know it’ll be hard.”

He could brush it off, say it’s part of the job. They prepare you for it in the CTP, spend class time and resources on the psychological impact of moving your command from ship to ship, from crew to crew. How to build trust and loyalty and love, and then leave.

“Probably harder than I want to admit.”

He glances at Kat. She’s got her placid therapist’s expression on, and he shakes his head; smiles, rueful.

“It’s fine,” he adds, a minor lie. “Besides, I’ve got work to do on _Enterprise_.”

Kat tilts her head.

“Not for three weeks.”

He narrows his eyes. “And?”

“I’m saying _take a vacation_ , Chris.”

“A vacation.”

His tone is flat. Kat ignores it.

“ _Enterprise_ won’t be out of spacedock for almost a month, ninety percent of the crew are on shore leave or light duties here, and frankly, you’ve not had the most restful tenure on _Discovery_. No—” She puts up a hand to stop him. “No, this is as close to an informal order as I can get.”

His frown deepens. He doesn’t like rest time, doesn’t like existing with no purpose. Time is finite, and Pike—well, he has no idea when his time will end, or how, or why. All that unknown potential. He doesn’t want to waste it.

“You can stay on at _Yorktown_ ,” Kat adds, “but I’m clearing you for off-station shore leave. Anywhere you want to go, within reason.”

It’s been so long since the concept of _vacations_ existed for him that Pike draws a blank. Space is for wandering, sure, but not the aimless kind. He wants to travel with purpose, with intent. To find whatever it is he’s looking for.

“You don’t have to decide immediately.” Kat’s tone is gentler, now, and she pushes herself off from the window, straightens up. “Just—think of somewhere and submit the vacation request by the end of the week. Okay?”

“End of the week,” he says. The grind and growl of spacedock echoes through the glass. “Got it.”

* * *

His quarters are empty, cleared of the pottery and paintings he brought from Mojave. The only thing left is his desk, moved from the ready room to give Saru his space. It’s going in the next ten minutes, back to its spot on _Enterprise_.

Pike’s footsteps fill in the gaps where his things used to be. The desk is in the middle of the floor, dumped there hastily the day before, and he touches the glass surface. There are still scorches in the wood below, burn marks that spiral and branch out like fractals. How old had he been when it was hit by lightning; five, six? It had still been his father’s, then.

 _Mojave_ , he thinks, Kat’s words still spinning around his head, and then: _Elysium._

The door-chime sounds louder now that the room is empty. He checks the time. Ops are early—

“Sir?”

Ensign Tilly stands at the threshold. She’s twisting her hands together, and as she steps in she observes the empty room. He eyes fall on the bed behind him and then dart quickly away. Her cheeks flush pink.

“I’m really sorry,” she begins, twisting her hands tighter. “I know it’s not normal, or appropriate, _at all_ , for me to be here, but—”

“It’s alright, Ensign.” His tone is gentle. “I trust you’ll have a good reason.”

He said goodbye to the crew last night, with a toast of bourbon around the conference desk; had only expected to see Saru again in any formal capacity.

“I, uh, I need you to sign off my CTP progress under your command? I meant to ask before but it’s been so busy with all the tachyon analysis, and Michael’s mom, which is still _crazy_ , and anyway, I’m sorry—”

“I mean it. It’s okay.”

Pike smiles in a way he hopes is encouraging; holds out his hand. Ensign Tilly passes her PADD over. The file is a basic CTP review, checking off what she has and has yet to achieve. The number of items marked _yes_ is impressive, considering the circumstances.

“There.” He signs and hands it back. “You’ve done well. You should be proud.”

She looks at him from under her eyelashes, opens her mouth; appears to think better of it.

Pike spreads his hands wide.

“Hey, whatever you want to say. I’m only your captain for another—” he checks the time, “—three hours, so. Take the opportunity.”

“Well, uh—” She presses her thumb into her palm, fingers opening like a blooming flower. “I just wanted to say thank you, for—well, everything, but specifically for the way you handled what happened with May? I don’t think a lot of captains would let their officers stay in the CTP after shouting at them in front of the bridge crew. And I heard that you—well, I heard what you said, what you asked the crew to do for me when I was in harm's way, and I wanted you to know that I—I appreciate it.”

She rounds her sentence out with a shrug, as though she’s not implicitly thanking him for saving her life. _Starfleet is a promise._

He smiles. “Nobody gets left behind.”

Her blush deepens, and she looks to some point beyond his left elbow. Her youth shines, crafted by shyness and nerves. The space between them is quiet; makes his mind tick over.

“Here’s the thing about being a captain,” he begins. The words sit on his tongue, naggingly familiar. “However many tests you take, how much you prepare, what matters when you’re out _there_ is whether your crew has faith in you. And it was always clear that _Discovery_ did, so I had faith in you too. I _have_ faith.”

Her voice is quiet. “Thank you.”

“Trust me. In the future you’ll make a wonderful Commanding Officer.”

Her shyness cracks; lets her smile, wide and elated.

“I—that means a lot, thank you, Sir.”

A pause. He studies her, cast in relief by the spacedock lights pouring in through the window. Red hair, spark-bright eyes. Wit, warmth, bravery.

“Command’s not just what you say,” he says, spurred by the impulse he can’t identify. “It’s the body language too. So, chin up, shoulders straight, direct gaze. Got it?”

He straightens his own posture on instinct, hands clasped behind his back. Ensign Tilly looks lost for a moment; but then she tilts her head, composes her frame, mirroring his.

Pike smiles. “There you go.”

It takes him a moment to realise that the confidence doesn’t look strange on her. He’d expected it would be like the uncanny valley, or a glimpse of a possible future—unknown, unsure—but it sits across her shoulders as though he’s seen it a thousand times before.

“Chin up, shoulders straight, direct gaze,” she murmurs.

It takes some of the edge away, like that version of her existed only between blinks, and he’s left again with the brilliant, flyaway Ensign who can barely look him in the eye.

He starts to speak—doesn’t know what or why—but the door chimes again.

“Ops,” he explains, gesturing to the desk, and then: “Come in.”

The Ops officers file through, miniature cargo transports in hand. Ensign Tilly shrinks into herself again, moving back so they can make use of the space, and he realises she’s waiting for him to let her go.

“You’re dismissed,” he says, gently, for the last time.

She nods, smiles, and when she speaks he hears layers in her words; full of all their moments, however fleeting.

“Thank you, Sir.”

Ensign Tilly turns, and walks away.

* * *

He’d expected Elysium to change. That had been the point, Pike remembers distinctly; for his stepfather to terraform it into something more habitable, less volatile. The quakes have stopped, but somehow the view from the approaching shuttle feels the same.

He files out with the other passengers; flexes his hand on the strap of his bag, pulls it up tighter and higher on his shoulder. He could have gone straight to Elysium City, but instead he’s detoured to the settlement on the edge of the plains; still feels uncertainty stirring in his gut over whether this was a good idea. His feet know the way as he descends the ramp, as he steps out of the port and into balmy summer sunshine.

Perhaps it’s not that Elysium hasn’t changed, he thinks, heading further and further out of town, until it’s only him and the dirt road. Perhaps it’s that he deliberately made his memories of this place blurry, indistinct, so the feelings they went with became blurry and indistinct too.

The house is still there. It’s alone in the landscape, surrounded by miles of grass plains that stretch until they reach mountains in the distance. The stables are there too, at the side of the house and a little way back. A colt trots around the paddock; memories of Tango spark and flood, and Pike clears his throat, keeps glancing back to the horses as he approaches the house, rings the bell.

The front door is open, leaving the screen door to present a dark outline of what’s inside. He can see the stairs, the stretch of the hallway down to the kitchen. Unnervingly familiar, even in shadow.

When she approaches he sees her in silhouette, cut out against the glare of light from the back yard.

She opens the screen door.

“Hi,” Pike says.

The woman shades her eyes against the sun. He’d messaged her a week ago, told her he wanted to drop by, to explore the places he’d lived as a boy, and she’d been nice, if bemused. _I didn’t realise Starfleet heroes like you came from Elysium_ , she’d replied, and he’d not had the heart to tell her it was a short, sharp two years in between Mojave.

“You can look around if you like.” She steps back, invites him inside. “I’m in the garden, but don’t mind me.”

She holds up a pair of shears. She’s wearing gardening gloves and a wide-brimmed straw hat, tied under the chin, from which strands of curly brown hair escape. She’s younger than him; must be about the age his mother was, living in the same house.

“Thank you.”

“The kids are out somewhere—” she gestures to the open back door, to the stretching plains. “My husband wanted to be here, but you know what frontier life is like, I guess. Sent off-world at a moment’s notice.”

“You said he’s at the Bureau of Conservation? That must be interesting work.”

Her smile blooms, and she stops in the kitchen doorway. There’s a deftness in her face, a cleverness that reminds him strongly of his mother.

“You’re really as nice as the stories say you are, aren't you?”

She leaves him to wander the hall, to climb the stairs. They still creak in the same places—third step under the right foot, seventh step under the left—but they feel smaller beneath his boots, the distance shorter. The last time he walked this path he’d been on the cusp of adolescence. A child might have grown and lived and had a family of their own in the time between now and then.

The bedroom of his angry boyhood is at the end. When he pushes the door open he sees it’s an office now, with a neatly-kept desk and chair. There’s still a patch on the wall where the sun bleached it; a perfect straight line where the headboard of his bed had been.

Light streams in across the floor, illuminating the path, and Pike stands in it, absorbs the warmth. He can remember all the detritus of his childhood: each plaything he’d grown out of and thrown under the bed; each t-shirt so often discarded on the floor; each poster hung on the walls. All the space he’d taken up.

Pike sighs. He feels— _less_ than he’d expected to; as though the ghosts are too busy to rise. He only feels agitated, like he still hasn’t found what he came back for.

He ventures back outside. The horses are mildly interested in him, swish-swishing their tails, sticking their heads over the paddock fence. They nudge their noses into his hand in search of food. The colt loses interest when she realises he doesn’t have any, but the older chestnut stays, letting him pat her neck.

“That’s Tango.”

His heart jumps; from surprise, and then confusion.

“Tango?” He eyes the two children standing a few feet behind him. “Your horse is called Tango.”

The boy has a more relaxed expression, but the girl looks unimpressed.

“Obviously,” she drawls.

They approach like explorers, intrepid but curious, until they’re standing with him at the fence. They’ve both inherited their mother’s curls, but the colour must be their father’s; a fiery red, bright against the landscape.

 _A house with a field behind it; a couple red-haired kids who talk fast and often, like their mother._ The thought comes from nowhere.

“Unusual name for a horse,” he says carefully, trying to pry. Where had _he_ gotten it, all those years before with his own?

“We found it scratched in the wood,” the boy says, pointing toward the barn. “Up in the hay loft.”

The first digit in his father’s Starfleet call-sign; that was it. He’d scratched it there, nestled in the sweet scent of hay, longing for his other home.

“Are you the Starfleet man that mom said was visiting?” the girl asks.

“Sure am.”

She seems to consider his answer. The colt has come back, drawn by the sound of her voice, and it nuzzles into her hand.

“When I grow up, I’m going to join Starfleet,” she says, with more confidence than half the adults he knows. “I’m going to be a captain.”

A horse called Tango. A mother knelt in the garden, pulling weeds. A kid looking up to the sky, dreaming of the future. Time, circling around and around, living the same lives over and over with different people.

The woman invites him in for sweet tea, but Pike declines, cites the lengthening day; doesn’t mention the hairs that have started to prickle on the back of his neck, telling him to move on, to keep looking for whatever has sent him halfway across the Quadrant.

The children wave him off from the gate, shouting goodbyes that carry on the breeze for a quarter mile. _A couple red-haired kids who talk fast and often, like their mother._ It feels like the echo of a life he hasn’t lived.

“Why are you here?” he asks the empty landscape, walking back up the road towards the City. Kat had replied to his vacation request with _really?_ , and he doesn’t blame her. She knows about Elysium from more than just the personnel file; from the early hours of Academy parties, lying in the grass with cheap alcohol and rambling stories on loosened tongues.

But something has needled him for days, for _weeks_ ; as though this place has been at the forefront of his thoughts instead of a passing recall every now and then.

The sun gets lower, bathing the view; by the time he reaches the City market everything is golden, vibrant. It will be open for hours yet, turning its daytime trade of fruit and vegetables and trinkets into alcohol and the kind of food which soaks it up. The vendors create a cheerful cacophony of noise, still selling even as they begin to swap out their wears. It stirs the first real wave of affection he’s felt since he got here.

 _Moba fruit_ , Pike thinks, pushing through the crowd. _And clavisoa berries._ He wonders if it’ll be the same Old Henry, selling to tourists at three times the price the locals pay.

 _I’d take you hiking in the hills and we’d walk on the beaches and go to the market in the city_ , he thinks; shakes his head, throwing the thought off like an insect. They feel like his words, even as they aren’t. They can’t be; he has no one to say them to.

“Seriously? That’s way too high.”

The voice carries as he spots the familiar blue awning of Old Henry’s market stall.

“I’m sorry—” and, oh, yes, that reply is the same Old Henry, even if he sounds more wizened, as dried up as the apricots he sells, “—but that’s the best price I can offer you. If you knew my overheads—”

“Henry, you tell me this _every time_ ,” she says. “Honestly—”

Pike stops. It’s sudden enough that someone walks into him with an angry _hey!_ —but he barely notices.

Her back is to him. The light picks her hair out like copper wire, and it ripples as she moves, gifting him her profile when she leans over the table. The strands at her temple are starting to gray, and there are soft lines around her eyes, a sharpness to her which is less unfamiliar than it should be.

She must catch him in the corner of her eye. She stills, gaze skittering off the fruit, swinging slowly, slowly, _slowly_ around until it lands on him.

— _decided to come back to you—keep going and you manage it better—selfish with me, just this—afraid—take you hiking in the hills and we’d walk on the beaches and go to—_

Tilly straightens carefully, gaze fixed on him. _I know you_ , Pike wants to say, but the words don’t feel real; won’t exist out loud.

She moves slowly, carefully, as though he’ll startle. He should tell her not to bother; he’s paralysed, fixed in this moment like nothing has ever existed outside of it. His mind flares like fireworks, filled with snatches of dreams, all shouting at him simultaneously. It’s overwhelming.

Tilly steps forward; one step, and then another, until they’re inches apart. He realises-remembers-recalls standing like this before, in some other place, some other _time_. Always with her.

Her hands twist in front of her; something Pike recognises from more than a dream.

“How?”

He's not even sure what he's asking her. His voice is dry, cracked with surprise, and he clears his throat. He’s asked this question before, haunted in places he calls home by someone the universe saw fit to separate him from. Vina then; and now, as memories of the future bloom slowly like an old, old photograph—

"I don't know." Tilly shakes her head. "I don't know."

Pike looks down at her hands. Tilly must notice, because she untwists them, lets them fall.

“After I dealt with Control—” she begins, and the blank fills in: _Leland_ , “I looked around and I asked myself, okay, Tilly, you changed the world. Where do you go now? Because she—"

"You," he says. The flyaway Ensign who can't look him in the eye.

Tilly nods. _She. Me. Her. I._

"She has a whole life ahead of her, you know? And I didn't—I wouldn't make it needlessly complicated. And it's fine, really, I was _ready_ to be alone, I prepared myself to hide from the universe, but I thought— _hoped_ ,” she corrects herself, “that maybe something amazing would happen. Something would remind you, and you'd remember, you'd _know_. You used to talk about living on the edge of everything and I figured, if I had to hide somewhere it would be—it would be somewhere you could find me. Just in case.”

Her gaze darts over his face; seems to find nothing there which surprises her. _I know you too_.

“I said I’d take you to the mountains.”

They’re not the words he meant to say, but they tumble out regardless.

Tilly breaks out into a grin. It’s like the sun has risen all over again.

“You did.”

“And the beaches, and the—”

“And the market,” she says along with him, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, you did.”

The world flows around them—people shouting, and laughing, and living—but it’s like another plane of existence; unknown, insignificant.

Pike reaches out; touches the fabric of her jacket, the collar of her dress, the strands of hair that have fallen there.

“I wanted to kiss you in the open air,” he says, reciting the recall as it comes to him. “I wanted to kiss you like it wasn’t a secret.”

Tilly closes her eyes for a brief moment, tilting her head back. The golden light illuminates her smile, so wide that it must almost hurt. It apples her cheeks, blushed pink and happy. When she looks back at him, her eyes shine.

“You never told me that.”

He moves his hand from her collar, up the curve of her throat to settle against her jaw. His fingers bury in her hair; his thumb smooths over the flushed skin of her cheek.

“I know you,” Pike says. This time, the words feel real.

He leans in, so close he can feel her breathing. A split-second pause, like he’s giving himself permission, or waiting for her to stop him; and then he presses his mouth to hers the way he has a hundred times, a thousand. Her lips are soft and familiar, part beneath his; a little cautious, and then, when he shivers despite the heat, warm and earnest and hungry. He brings his other hand up to her face, presses as close as he can, awed by the touch and taste and _feel_ of her, like a part of himself he didn’t remember losing until—

“Are you kids going to buy any of this fruit or not?”

Old Henry’s voice cracks through, jolts them out of their dream. Tilly laughs into Pike’s mouth, and he can feel her smile there, against his.

“How much for the clavisoa berries?” he asks over her shoulder.

“Much less than you’ll pay at that crook down the street,” Old Henry says, and then, squinting his old, rheumy eyes at Pike— “Aren’t you the kid who lived in that house out on the plains—”

Pike laughs, full and loud; buries his face in Tilly’s hair, breathes in. Bajoran lilacs. He remembers that too. He feels buoyed with joy, as memories flow slowly back to him and the sun gets lower in Elysium’s sky.

He tucks those graying strands of hair behind Tilly’s ear.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hello.” She grins, as bright as the stars they fell through to get here. “You decided to come back to me.”

He sees it; Tilly perched on the couch in his ready room, beaten and bruised and so much older than the last time he’d seen her.

“I decided to come back to you,” he echoes; a memory only one of them has lived.

He kisses her again, slow, like they have all the time the universe will offer; realises (in the taste and feel of her; in the light, sure touch of Tilly’s hands) that they do. Perhaps this moment should burn, should shudder through him like fire; but Pike feels only a quiet, peaceful certainty. The sun sinks, taking the gold from the air, and the violet evening lengthens. The world turns one single, peaceful second at a time; moves towards a future they will write for themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and they lived happily ever after :)
> 
> A huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who's read and enjoyed this fic. I've had the most wonderful time writing this story, not least because of you. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
> 
> The amazing people on the Pike/Tilly discord server deserve the most special of mentions for their constant encouragement, kind words, and enthusiasm; you are all spectacular.
> 
> Here's to space, and love, and fanfic.


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